Oral Answers to Questions

WALES

The Secretary of State was asked—

Employment

Stephen Crabb: What his latest estimate is of the percentage of the working-age population in Wales which is in work.

Peter Hain: More than 71 per cent. of the Welsh working age population were in employment as of September. Some 1.3 million of the Welsh population are now in work, and there has been an increase in this regard of more than 6,000 in six years in the hon. Gentleman's constituency.

Stephen Crabb: I thank the Secretary of State for that reply, but he knows full well that whatever increase there has been in overall employment levels in Wales in the past two to three years has resulted from the enormous increase in migrant labour coming into Wales. Given that his Neath constituency has more than 6,000 people on incapacity benefit and more than 1,000 young people not in education, employment or training, when will he shake off this complacency and start taking seriously the problem of worklessness in Wales?

Peter Hain: What is interesting about that question, which I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has asked, is that incapacity benefit levels tripled in Wales under the Conservative Government. I remember that in my constituency, and in those of hon. and right hon. Friends, people were just pushed out of mining and heavy industry—not into jobs, because they did not exist, but on to incapacity benefit, there to stay. Economic inactivity rates are now falling faster in Wales than anywhere else in the United Kingdom because of the interventionist measures that the Government have taken to give people hope and jobs for the future.

Don Touhig: In the past 10 years, major employers such as General Dynamics UK, Axiom and Brace's Bakery have invested in my constituency and brought new jobs. A strong economy and the fact that Wales, and Islwyn in particular, is a great place to grow one's business have been a major factor. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we must resist those, and the Conservative party in particular, who put forward policies that would deter investment in Wales?

Peter Hain: I completely agree with my right hon. Friend. Indeed, the Opposition's policies would take Wales back to the miserable economic situation of the 1980s and 1990s, when unemployment went through the roof, people were put on to incapacity benefit and the economy suffered as a result. He might have been thinking about other Opposition barriers, so I should mention the vice-president of Plaid Cymru. When she proposed last week rejecting the St. Athan defence academy training establishment, the Plaid Cymru annual conference merely noted her proposition. Is that party in favour on that issue or not?

Mark Williams: On promoting greater employment levels, is the Secretary of State happy with the approaches taken at Jobcentre Plus, particularly to encourage people with special learning needs back to work? I am thinking of those who suffer from autistic spectrum disorders. What approaches are being employed in Jobcentre Plus to help such people back to work? Will he talk to organisations such as Autism Cymru to encourage their work further?

Peter Hain: I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman has raised the issue of autism. I have worked closely with Autism Cymru and, when Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, with Autism Northern Ireland. Our approach depends on severity on the spectrum of autism. Those on the light end of the spectrum, as it were, can be helped into work, and have been by Jobcentre Plus. Those at the difficult end of the spectrum are more difficult to help, but we continually work with such organisations to try to tackle the problem and to deal with people in that situation.

David Jones: The right hon. Gentleman will recall that in his alter ego as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions he told the House that
	"youth unemployment has been all but eradicated"—[ Official Report, 18 July 2007; Vol. 463, c. 283.]
	However, the Office for National Statistics labour force survey reveals that the number of young people aged 16 to 19 in Wales who are unemployed rose from 17,000 in June 1997 to 23,000 in June 2007, which is an increase of 35 per cent., and the number of those who are economically inactive rose from 50,000 to 65,000, which is an increase of 30 per cent. Will the Secretary of State explain to the House how such large increases amount to an eradication of youth unemployment? Is it simply that it does not count in Wales?

Peter Hain: As the hon. Gentleman knows, the youth unemployment figures are normally calculated on the 18 to 24 age group, and long-term youth unemployment in that group has been all but eradicated across the UK, as I have told the House previously. There is, however, a particular problem with 16 and 17-year-olds, which is why we are introducing policies to ensure that they stay on in education, training or an apprenticeship. That is the Government's policy. It is important that we bear down on the problem to give new hope and opportunity. He should not talk about youth unemployment. There was mass youth unemployment under the Tories, and if we adopted his policies we would go back to it.

Chris Ruane: Does my right hon. Friend recall the phrase "Unemployment is a price worth paying"? What assessment has he made of the city strategy pilots in Rhyl in my constituency and the south Wales valleys to combat unemployment and the use of incapacity benefit?

Peter Hain: I congratulate my hon. Friend on his chairmanship of the city programme in Rhyl, where I saw him at work when I visited. He has brought together a range of employers, the local authority and voluntary groups in a really good strategy for tackling Rhyl's long-standing problems of inactivity, and they are starting to make an impact. I remember the statement that unemployment was a price worth paying; I think it was made by a former Conservative Chancellor. I also remember statements from other Conservative Cabinet Ministers telling people to get on their bikes and find a job. That is what the Conservatives were saying to the people of Wales.
	There are now more jobs in Wales than ever before. Some of the statistics are amazing. Wales accounts for nearly 15 per cent. of the UK's graduate business start-ups, yet on the population base that figure should be only 5 per cent., so it shows our success in Wales.

Comprehensive Spending Review

Philip Hollobone: What discussions he has had with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury on the comprehensive spending review settlements for the Welsh Assembly Government and Wales Office.

Peter Hain: I had constructive discussions with the Chief Secretary during the comprehensive spending review process, which delivered a higher than average settlement for Wales, giving both the Welsh Assembly Government and the Wales Office the resources to deliver on policy priorities.

Philip Hollobone: The capital gains tax changes announced alongside the comprehensive spending review will be a disaster for Wales. Was not the Welsh shadow Finance Minister, Angela Burns, absolutely right to highlight the damage that will be done to the Welsh economy because 98 per cent. of firms in Wales employ fewer than 50 people?

Peter Hain: In that case, why do we have one of the best business start-up rates anywhere in Britain? Why do we have the graduate start-up rates that I have just described? Why is the Welsh economy doing much better on exports, economic activity falls and on almost every indicator? I know the Welsh business community, because unlike the hon. Gentleman, I am a Welsh MP. He should talk to Welsh businesses; they say that the Welsh economy is performing better than they can ever recall in their business life. He should talk to them about their prospects rather than try to talk them down.

Albert Owen: I welcome the comprehensive spending review as it pertains to Wales, especially alongside the convergence funding that will allow projects in my area to progress. As my right hon. Friend is aware, one such project, supported by the Welsh Assembly Government and Anglesey county council, is the widening of Stephenson's Britannia bridge across the Menai straits. Will he work with the Assembly Government and the county council to make sure that the project comes to fruition, and that they draw down the correct money so that north-west Wales can enjoy prosperity in the future?

Peter Hain: Indeed. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing attention to that important project. I have travelled over the bridge with him from time to time when visiting the constituency he represents so well. It is important that such infrastructure projects are driven forward, especially with the help of the £3 billion-worth of European convergence funding that benefits his constituency and many others in west Wales and the valleys.

Cheryl Gillan: The Secretary of State knows that the Labour-Plaid Assembly Government said that the CSR has delivered the worst settlement for Wales since devolution. Over the next few months, has the right hon. Gentleman any plans to give Welsh Assembly Ministers tax-raising powers, in any shape or form, to plug the gap?

Peter Hain: I am very pleased that the hon. Lady has asked that question. Not only do I have no power to give tax-varying powers to the Welsh Assembly Government, but the settlement, which was welcomed by the Welsh Assembly Government Finance Minister, speaking on behalf of the whole Welsh Assembly coalition Government, represents spending growth at an annual average real-terms rate of 2.4 per cent. That is higher than the UK average of 2.1 per cent. and higher than for the other devolved Administrations—Scotland is at 1.8 per cent. and Northern Ireland at 1.7 per cent. The hon. Lady should welcome that spending, especially as the Welsh budget is more than double the amount we inherited in 1997.

Cheryl Gillan: The Secretary of State knows that this is not my criticism, but that of his Plaid partners in Wales. I suggest that he speaks to his Cabinet colleagues and his Plaid coalition partners, because he is in fact planning to impose taxes on Welsh road users. The Local Transport Bill gives Assembly Ministers power to impose a tax on all drivers using trunk roads in Wales—power to tax Welsh lorry drivers, Welsh farmers and tourists driving in Wales. Those provisions were not in the draft Bill and have been slipped in at the last moment, probably at the request of the Plaid Transport Minister. As the Government have ruled out a national road pricing—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Lady should shorten the questions in future.  [ Interruption. ] I know that it is a big question. That is what I am saying: she should cut the big questions down.

Peter Hain: I regularly speak to Welsh Assembly Government Ministers, and I recommend that the hon. Lady does so too. She might then get her questions a little straighter. The truth is that they have asked for these powers— [ Interruption. ] Is she seeking to deny the Welsh Assembly Government the powers for which they are asking? In that case, she would be unable to see or support the building of the M4 relief road. Probably the only way that that relief road can be financed is through raising a toll, and having the power to do so. I would have thought that she would support that objective given the traffic problems in the Newport-Cardiff area of the M4, which is often brought to gridlock.

Madeleine Moon: The comprehensive spending review also introduced a £1.1 billion environmental transformation fund for the consideration of new energy projects and technology. Inetec, a company in my constituency, has a wonderful new technology that would use food and packaging waste to generate electricity. It would not use anaerobic digestion, as the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has proposed. Will my right hon. Friend agree to take the matter up with the Welsh Assembly Government so that that new technology for Wales can be moved forward?

Peter Hain: I shall happily do that, and I await further details from my hon. Friend. May I take this opportunity to speak on behalf of the whole House, I hope, in saying how delighted I am to see that the Government have announced the go-ahead for the world's largest biomass plant at Port Talbot? It will be fuelled by wood chips, and will contribute about 70 per cent. of the Welsh Assembly Government's 2010 renewable electricity targets and involve 150 jobs. That is a very good project.

Lembit �pik: Dafydd Wigley said that the Plaid-Labour coalition's days could be numbered due to a particularly tight comprehensive spending review, which will mean the non-delivery of One Wales commitments on first-time buyers, pensioners and free laptops for children. What discussions has the Secretary of State had with Welsh Assembly Ministers about whether the Plaid and Labour commitments to the people of Wales can be delivered with the comprehensive spending review as it stands?

Peter Hain: I did speak to the Assembly Finance Minister, Andrew Davies, and he was pleased with the result. I will just say to the hon. Gentleman that I would not rely on quoting Plaid Cymru leaders of any kind. It is not a reliable guide to anything, frankly.

Child Poverty

Jennifer Willott: What discussions he has had with ministerial colleagues on levels of child poverty in Wales; and if he will make a statement.

Huw Irranca-Davies: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I have regular discussions with ministerial colleagues on levels of child poverty in Wales.

Jennifer Willott: Mencap Cymru recently found that Welsh families with a child with a learning disability are missing out on an average of 5,000 a year in benefits. Some miss out on as much as 20,000. In addition, recent news reports suggest that 21 million devolved to the Assembly for support for disabled children has been diverted elsewhere in the budget. Given that those households with disabled children are among the poorest in Wales, what measures are the Minister and Secretary of State taking to improve support for those families and their benefit take-up levels?

Huw Irranca-Davies: Mencap and other organisations play an important role in feeding into the process by which we bring forward policy to tackle child poverty. The hon. Lady will acknowledge that when the Government came to power, 3.4 million children were living in poverty. Since 1998-99, 600,000 have been lifted out of poverty. Our strategy in the UK is to commit to halve child poverty by 2011 and to raise the bar to eradicate 60 per cent. of child poverty by 2020. Huge strides have been made. The number of children in households in the UK with incomes below the poverty line fell by 100,000 between 1998-99 and 2005-06. We are committed to eradicating child poverty, and we will continue with that objective.

Betty Williams: My hon. Friend will be aware that the child trust fund scheme has been welcomed in Wales as a way to tackle child poverty, and that take-up in my constituency at 76.9 per cent. is higher than average. Will he find ways to encourage more parents to use the vouchers so as to raise that percentage even more?

Huw Irranca-Davies: The high level of take-up in my hon. Friend's constituency is very good news, and she is right that we must do everything we can to encourage higher levels across Wales. The child trust fund is important, but the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws), the Liberal Democrat spokesman on these matters, has said in a press release:
	The Child Trust Fund should be scrapped and the money should be used where it would really make a differencehelping youngsters.
	However, if the Liberal Democrats are serious about combating child poverty

Mr. Speaker: Order. That is not a matter for the Minister.

Economy

Hywel Francis: What discussions he has had with the First Minister of the Welsh Assembly Government on recent developments in the Welsh economy.

Huw Irranca-Davies: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I have regular discussions with the First Minister about all aspects of the Welsh economy. The Welsh Assembly and the UK Government have worked in partnership to ensure that the Welsh economy has grown rapidly to historic levels of output, with record investment.

Hywel Francis: I thank the Minister for that reply, and I am sure that he will agree that one of the best ways to tackle the twin challenges facing the Welsh economy todayeconomic inactivity and low skills levelsis to support the excellent work being done across Wales by many organisations. In my constituency, they include the Shaw Trust in Llandarcy, Remploy in Baglan and, in particular, the New Sandfields Aberavon development trust, whose Strides project, in partnership with Sandfields comprehensive school, has done so much to assist the skills levels of young people.

Huw Irranca-Davies: I agree entirely, and my hon. Friend is right to point out that a genuinely partnership approach is being adopted. That is why employment in Wales is at historically high levels, with 1.334 million people now in work. As a result of this Government's policies, Wales is attracting record levels of investment, and that has led to consistent growth in employment levels. In partnership with all sorts of organisations, Wales is becoming truly world class.

Roger Williams: Gross value added is now recognised as a key economic indicator. If the UK average is taken to be 100, Wales stands at 78 while west Wales and the valleys languish at 65, despite seven years of objective 1 funding and expenditure of 1 billion. The main reason for that is the absence of involvement by the private sector. What conversations will the Minister have with the Welsh Assembly to ensure that the private sector gets more involved with convergence funding to make it more successful than the abortive objective 1 funding?

Huw Irranca-Davies: By way of answer, let me say that incapacity benefit claims have fallen by 9 per cent. in west Wales and the valleys, and the figure for Wales as a whole is even higher. The strategies to turn the existing problem around are firmly embedded, but I agree entirely that the private sector must get involved. It is noticeable that private sector output in Wales has risen for 45 successive months, from March 2003 to October 2007, but it is true that we must also get the private sector involved with convergence funding.

Chris Bryant: One of the most significant developments in the next few years will be the St. Athan defence training academy, on which we hope that building will start in the next two years. We have already won the first package, so will the Minister do everything in his power to make sure that the Ministry of Defence understands the benefits of bringing the second package to Wales as well? That is supported by everyone on the Labour side of the House, but will he make sure it is supported by everyone on the other side as well?

Huw Irranca-Davies: My hon. Friend makes a very important point. The success of the academy depends very much on strong and coherent cross-party support and leadership. The massive investment in the new St. Athan defence training academy, worth billions of pounds, shows that the Government have given Wales a huge vote of confidence and is a sign of the country's bright economic future. Thousands of jobs will be created when construction of the academy is complete, and they will come on top of the 1,500 jobs created during the construction period. We must continue to show consensus and leadership at all levels on this matter.

Adam Price: Can the Minister confirm that, when the Varney review on corporation tax cuts reports in the next few weeks, any tax breaks offered by the Government to businesses in Northern Ireland will also be offered to businesses in Wales?

Huw Irranca-Davies: There will be a level playing field on that issue. I reiterate the comments that have been made about St. Athan and elsewhere: we would welcome the hon. Gentleman's help in ensuring that there is coherent, joined-up cross-party support for St. Athan.

Benefit Claimants

Nia Griffith: What discussions he has had with ministerial colleagues on reducing the number of people claiming benefits in Wales.

Peter Hain: We have the objective of reducing the number of people claiming benefits in Wales, by getting them into work.

Nia Griffith: I welcome the fact that our programmes are enabling people to come off benefits and into work, but what reassurance can the Secretary of State give that the recipients of disability living allowance who suffer from a progressive disease will not be subject to unnecessary stress by examinations under the right payment programme, as that will both cause them tremendous distress and waste staff time?

Peter Hain: Clearly, people, possibly including my hon. Friend's constituents in that predicament, who are severely disabled should be helped and supported on benefit and not forced into any old job, but we are changing the capability assessment under which people's potential to work is medically assessed, to ensure that they are supported and given the maximum opportunity. More and more disabled people are working with the help of our Government's policies, and incapacity benefit levels have fallen by 12 per cent. in her constituency as people have moved off benefits and into work.

Ian Lucas: Does my right hon. Friend agree that supporting youth projects is a key way of getting more people into work? Will he join me in condemning the Liberal-Tory alliance on Wrexham council, which is systematically targeting the poorest wards in Wrexham by closing down facilities that help young people into work?

Peter Hain: Indeed. I am horrified by the Liberal Democrat council's performance in Wrexham, and I hope that it will be swept out of power next May. I am delighted at Labour's recent stunning by-election victory in Wrexham, overturning a Liberal Democrat majority of 231 in the Stansty council ward.

Legislative Competence

Michael Fabricant: What steps he is taking to increase the National Assembly for Wales' legislative competence.

Shailesh Vara: What steps he is taking to increase the National Assembly for Wales' legislative competence.

Peter Hain: We are committed to giving the National Assembly for Wales new law-making powers under the provisions of the Government of Wales Act 2006.

Michael Fabricant: Returning to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan), does the Secretary of State not realise that damage will be done to tourism by allowing taxation on all vehicles that enter Wales? That is what will happen if the framework powers go ahead. Why are these actions being taken, given that there has been no proper consultation?

Peter Hain: I do not accept anything that the hon. Gentleman has said. As I explained patiently to the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan), the Conservative spokesman for Wales, the truth is that the measures for which the Welsh Assembly Government are asking Westminster to grant will enable them, for example, to impose a toll like the one that has been successfully operated on the M6 from Birmingham towards Manchester, in order to fund the M4 relief road. The hon. Gentleman might knowhe might not, of coursethat there is severe traffic congestion in the Brynglas tunnel and elsewhere on the M4 on the stretch from the Severn bridge to Cardiff. These measures are not meant to impose nationwide tolls in Wales or anything of the kind that he suggests; they are specifically targeted to help in specific instances, including the M4 relief road.

Shailesh Vara: Does the Secretary of State foresee any circumstance whereby primary legislative power will be transferred to the National Assembly under the Government of Wales Act 2006 in this Parliament?

Peter Hain: I have made it clear to this Parliament in taking the 2006 Act through its passage that I think that that is unlikely, and I have said all along that I am in favour of calling a referendum on full law-making powers, which I support and put into the Bill, when we are likely to win it. I do not think that there is any point in calling a premature referendum, which would produce a repeat of 1979, rather than the success, albeit narrow, that we achieved in 1997. We need to build a consensus for a yes vote across all parties, and I want to be part of achieving that.

Planning Bill

Elfyn Llwyd: What discussions he has had with the First Minister of the Welsh Assembly Government on the implications for Wales of the forthcoming planning Bill.

Huw Irranca-Davies: I speak regularly to ministerial colleagues in the Welsh Assembly Government on the implications for Wales of the Government's legislative programme, including the planning Bill.

Elfyn Llwyd: The planning Bill is, in effect, undemocratic. It will take away from local people the right to cross-examine infrastructure proposals. Will the hon. Gentleman take time to discuss the matter with Assembly Ministers, who are very concerned about the way in which the Bill is going to be presented?

Huw Irranca-Davies: I disagree with the idea that the Bill will take away powers. It will implement proposals set out in the White Paper Planning for a Sustainable Future to streamline and improve planning. It is another Government proposal that fulfils our commitment of devolving legislative competence to the National Assembly for Wales via framework powers. The consent regime for significant infrastructure projects will respect the existing devolution settlement. The infrastructure planning commission will decide whether to grant consent for projects in Wales only if the existing consent regimes are not devolved.

PRIME MINISTER

The Prime Minister was asked

Engagements

Ann McKechin: If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 21 November.

Gordon Brown: Before listing my engagements, I am sure that the whole House will wish to join me in sending our profound condolences to the family and friends of Captain John McDermid of the Royal Highland Fusiliers, 2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland, who was killed in Afghanistan last Wednesday, and our condolences also to the families and friends of the two service personnel who died yesterday in a helicopter crash in Iraq. We owe them and others who have lost their lives a deep debt of gratitude.
	I am also sure that the whole House will wish to send our warmest congratulations to Her Majesty the Queen and Prince Philip on their diamond wedding anniversary yesterday. They have both devoted their lives to public service and we pay tribute to them again today.
	This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

Ann McKechin: May I associate myself with the expressions of sympathy by the Prime Minister?
	Many people in my constituency and throughout the country will have been very concerned at the announcement yesterday about the loss of millions of data records from the child benefit office. Can my right hon. Friend assure me and the House that he will take every possible step to ensure the protection of the data of our citizens, not only in Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, but across Government?

Gordon Brown: I profoundly regret and apologise for the inconvenience and worries that have been caused to millions of families who receive child benefit. When mistakes happen in enforcing procedures, we have a duty to do everything that we can to protect the public. That is why bank accounts are being checked now for fraudulent activities and why the banks have agreed to look back to 18 October and beyond to check whether there have been any fraudulent activitiesand there is no evidence of that happening. That is why the banking code will ensure that there are no losses suffered by anybody who receives child benefit if there is fraud in their accountsand again there is no evidence of fraud.
	It is also why we have set up the review by the chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers into the procedures that have been followed. I can also say to the House today that I have asked the Cabinet Secretary and security experts to ensure that all Departments and all agencies check their procedures for the storage and use of data. As the House may know, last month I also set up a review to be chaired by Mark Walport of the Wellcome Trust and the Information Commissioner jointly, to look at the security of personal data in both the public and the private sector. They will look at the work of Government agencies and Departments. We will give the Information Commissioner the power to spot-check Departments, to do everything in his power and our power to secure the protection of data. In other words, we will do everything in our power to make sure that data are safe.

David Cameron: I join the Prime Minister in paying tribute to Captain John McDermid, who was killed in Afghanistan last Wednesday, and to the two service personnel who were killed when their RAF Puma helicopter was lost in Iraq last night. They all died serving our country.
	I also join the Prime Minister in congratulating the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh on their diamond jubilee. They have had a remarkable life together, and a life of public service.
	Millions of people will today be worrying about the safety of their bank accounts and the security of their family details, but they will not just be worried; they will be angry that the Government have failed in their first dutyto protect the public. Does the Prime Minister think that the matter should be treated as an isolated incident, or does he believe that there is wider, systemic failure and a lack of leadership at Revenue and Customs?

Gordon Brown: It is precisely because we have to check all procedures, not just in HMRC but in all departments, that I have asked the Cabinet Secretary to conduct a review. There is also the review that will be conducted by the chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers into HMRC itself. I have to tell the right hon. Gentleman that there is no evidence of fraudulent activity taking place, and that this was a failure in implementing the proper procedures. It is important that he should know that the procedures that should have been followed are these: only authorised staff must be allowed access to protectively marked information; information must not be removed without appropriate authorisation; and encryption should be used whenever any information is being sent. Those were the procedures. They are in existence now, and they should have been operated.

David Cameron: It is all very well holding reviews, but the Government have had 10 years to sort out the department. I have to say to the Prime Minister that if a junior official in an organisation can access so much information and send it not once, not twice but three times, that is evidence of systemic failure. Last year there were more than 2,000 breaches of security at Revenue and Customs. In May this year, 8,000 families needing tax credits had their bank details revealed, and later in the year details of 15,000 taxpayers, including private pension information, were lost in the post. The Government said at the time:
	We have...reviewed our arrangements and introduced safeguards to prevent this happening in future.
	Clearly, that was completely wrong. Does the Prime Minister accept systemic failure in the department?

Gordon Brown: What I accept is that the review must look at all the procedures that are adopted by HMRC, but it must also look at other Government Departments and agencies. In relation to the case that the right hon. Gentleman is quotingthat of Standard Lifeyes, a review was done, and it proposed that there be changes in both encryption and audit. The problem was that the information that was lost was lost on October 18, and the procedures that should have been followed were not followed. Let me just tell him [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Gordon Brown: I think that the House should know that under the Manual of Protective Security, which all departments are obliged to follow, any data that are sensitive will attract a protective markingrestricted/confidentialand should be encrypted when in transit. There is absolutely no doubt that that is the procedure; it just was not followed, and that is what the investigation has got to look at.

David Cameron: But this has been going on for years.  [Interruption.] Yes, let us look at what happened in September 2005, two years ago: Revenue and Customs lost vital data about savings from one of its clients, UBS. The data were stored on a CD-ROM and were not encrypted. The data went missing from a Revenue and Customs office, and what happened? Revenue and Customs claimed it was a one-off incident in a single office. That is what I call systemic failurewhen procedures are not followed over and over again. HMRC was the Prime Minister's department. He insisted that it paid child benefit, and he increased its scope. Clearly there is a problem with its security, its privacy, its culture and its leadership. Does the Prime Minister feel at all responsible for this?

Gordon Brown: The Leader of the Opposition should know that his party supported the changes that we made to HMRC. The National Audit Office reported on the changes that we brought about and said the performance of HMRC had not been adversely affected. The adjudicator for HMRC said that the changes had not had any negative impact. I have to ask the right hon. Gentleman: what if we had followed his advice at the last general election? He proposed that we cut expenditure on HMRC. His reportthe James review that he put into his manifestosaid that his party should cut 660,000 million by what they called the Rationalisation of data processing. It was he who recommended further cuts.

David Cameron: rose[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. The Leader of the Opposition.

David Cameron: I have to say that on a day when the Government have lost the details of 25 million people, to try and blame the Opposition is pathetic. What people want from their Prime Minister on a day like this is for him to stand up, show some broad shoulders, be the big man and take some responsibility. This morning his Chancellor, to give him credit, had the guts to admit that his confidence had been shaken. The Prime Minister was in charge of the Department for 10 years. By definition, that must have been when the systemic failure developed, so has his confidence been shaken?

Gordon Brown: I said right at the beginning that I apologise for what has happened. Everybody who is a recipient of child benefit should know that we will follow every proper procedure now to improve the working of HMRC and of every Government Department and agency. I have announced not only the inquiry into HMRC, but that the Cabinet Secretary will look at every Government Department and every agency. I have also announced, which is important, that we will look at the collection of private and public data. That is what the Walport review will look into. The idea that we are complacent about the matter is ridiculous. We are taking all the action that is necessary. The right hon. Gentleman raised the question of HMRC and its resources and staff. I am saying to him that the reports have shown that that is not the reason that things have gone wrong. There is no excuse for not following proper procedures.

David Cameron: If the Prime Minister really wants to learn some lessons, will he recognise that this appalling blunder comes at a time when the Government are planning a national identity register to draw together private and personal details of every single person in this country? Will the events of the past few days cause him to stop and think about that policy?

Gordon Brown: I have already announced the inquiries that we have set up, but let me say that 22 out of 25 European countries have identity cards. The right hon. Gentleman's own security adviser proposes identity cards. His own reviewer of the national police forcethe border forcesays that he is in favour of identity cards. What we must ensure is that identity fraud is avoided, and the way to avoid identity fraud is to say that for passport information we will have the biometric support that is necessary, so that people can feel confident that their identity is protected.

David Cameron: People are desperately worried about the privacy of their bank account details and their personal details. They will find it truly bizarrethey will find it weirdthat the Prime Minister does not want to stop and think about the dangers of a national identity register. Will people not think that he has completely lost touch with reality? He is demonstrating no common sense at all. Will they not see a Prime Minister who tries to control everything, but cannot run anything?

Gordon Brown: I will not accept any advice on competence [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. The Prime Minister.

Gordon Brown: The right hon. Gentleman talks about running things well. For 10 years we have had the best economic policy in any part of Europe, for 10 years the lowest inflation of any decade, the lowest interest rates of any decade and the highest employment of any decadesomething that he could never rival.

Patricia Hewitt: rose

Michael Fabricant: Tell them about the NHS IT programmes.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Mr. Fabricant, you must behave yourself.

Patricia Hewitt: Does my right hon. Friend agree that all those who support his call for urgent action on the environment should also support the European reform treaty that will allow an enlarged European Union to put behind us institutional questions and instead concentrate on what really matters, including tackling climate change?

Gordon Brown: My right hon. Friend has taken a long-term interest in how we can improve our environment. There is no doubt that we cannot have environmental improvement without European co-operation. If the Conservatives want to support environmental co-operation, they should be supporting the reform treaty.

Vincent Cable: I add my condolences in respect of the servicemen and my congratulations to Her Majesty.
	After the twin disasters of 25 billion of taxpayers' money disappearing down the black hole of Northern Rock and 25 million personal records disappearing in the post, does the Prime Minister accept the wisdom of Tony Blair who said that the Treasury had become far too powerful under its previous incumbent, was no longer fit for purpose and should have been broken up?

Gordon Brown: This is a new policy from the Liberal party today. I do not know whether the new leader of the Liberal party will want to stick with the policy to break up the Treasury. If the hon. Gentleman seriously believes, as he implies, that we should not be helping Northern Rock depositors and savers, if he seriously believes that we should let Northern Rock mortgage holders go under, then I do not believe he has support in any part of the country. We have taken the right decisioninitially supported, of course, by the Leader of the Opposition, who has since backed away from itto give liquidity to Northern Rock. I hope that the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) will continue to support that position.

Vincent Cable: May I point the Prime Minister to the next Treasury disaster, with the imminent publication of the report on the privatisation of QinetiQ, which I warned about in the debate 18 months ago? Was the Prime Minister not financially very naive when he agreed to the undervaluation of public assets, enabling an American private equity company to make a windfall profit of 300 million and the chief civil servant involved to make a personal fortune of 22 million?

Gordon Brown: It is very interesting that the hon. Gentleman has not moved to talk about Northern Rock again. I suppose that he is now supporting us in rescuing Northern Rock. I hope that that is a consensus.
	As far as QinetiQ is concerned, we raised 800 million from the sale. QinetiQ is serving its country under its new ownership and QinetiQ is very important to the Ministry of Defence's future procurement plans.

Barry Sheerman: Does my right hon. Friend agree that, given the dramatic decline in the number of unskilled jobs in our country, it is absolutely imperative that we encourage young people to stay in education and training up to the age of 18? Will he join me in criticising those orchestrating a campaign of disinformation, who are suggesting that we want to keep kids in schools until they are 18?

Gordon Brown: The proposal to raise the education leaving age to 18 over the next few years includes, for example, a young person at 16 or 17 getting a job and doing one day a week of training. I would have thought that just as there was all-party support for the Education Act 1944the last time the education leaving age was raised by legislationthere should be all-party support for what we are doing. I regret very much that the education spokesman of the Conservative party has called raising the education leaving age to 18 a stunt; it is absolutely vital for the future of our country.

John Randall: Has any member of the Prime Minister's Cabinet offered to resign in the last two weeks?

Gordon Brown: Noand nor should they.

Richard Burden: I welcome the speech that the Prime Minister made on Monday about the challenge of climate change, and in particular the decision to locate the energy technologies institute with a consortium of universities in the midlands. However, does he agree that if we are really going to seize the opportunity to become world leaders in the development of environmental technologies, the initiatives that we take need to go far beyond the universities to provide jobs, skills and regeneration in areas such as my part of Birmingham? They have been suffering big changes over the past decade or more.

Gordon Brown: Just as information technology created millions of jobs in the 1990s, so environmental technologies can create millions of jobs across Europe and the world over the next few years. That is why the joint public-private energy technologies institute, now funded to the tune of 800 millionhalf of that from the private sectoris absolutely vital in giving us a world lead in the new products and processes. I am very pleased that my hon. Friend's constituency and many universities around the country are going to benefit from participation in this. It is an example of public money being used for a public purpose, working with the private sector to create new industries and new jobs.

John Redwood: Why are there so many potential terrorists in Britain today?

Gordon Brown: We know from the statement made by the head of MI5 that we are dealing with a small but important group of young terrorists who are operating in cells, and we know that there are distinct links in our country with the Asian sub-continent; that is one of the reasons why the numbers in Britain are so high. However, we also know that the measures that we announced last week, not only to win the battle of hearts and minds but to isolate extremists, are the right way forward. The right hon. Gentleman should agree with me that we are making substantial advances in persuading young people that this is not the right way forward and in isolating these terrorist extremists in our country, and we will continue to fight the battle against terrorism.

Paul Farrelly: Yesterday, as part of the parliamentary education service's excellent programme, students from Newcastle-under-Lyme college of further education visited me here in Westminster. In Newcastle, we will shortly get a brand new 25 million FE college, which is our latest big investment in education in the area. That said, despite regeneration, too many of our youngsters have mainly low-paid and low-skilled jobs in newer industries such as distribution to look forward to. What further measures will the Government take to ensure that our children are equipped with the education and skills that they need to meet their rising aspirations and the rising aspirations of the traditional industrial areas such as north Staffordshire?

Gordon Brown: When we came to power in 1997, the apprenticeship system was dying out. Now the number of apprentices is 250,000, and we want to double that to 500,000. I hope that there will be all-party support for improving the apprenticeship system.

Elfyn Llwyd: Is it time for Blackadder to say goodbye to Darling?

Gordon Brown: I have already answered that question. The Chancellor has done an excellent job both as a former Minister at the Treasury and now as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Andy Reed: In discussions with students in Ramallah on the west bank a couple of weeks ago, I felt depressed by the fact that those students had done what they were asked to dothey had got themselves a college education and were in their final year at universitybut said that they had no hope because there were no jobs. Whatever happens in Annapolis, will my right hon. Friend ensure that economic regeneration and hope for young Palestinians is at the top of the Government's agenda in the middle east?

Gordon Brown: I believe that all sections of the House will want to support the Annapolis talks, which start in the next few days. It is very important to say that the Annapolis talks are part of a framework over the next few months, whereby we then have a donors conference in December and, I hope, build on that with our proposals for greater economic security and support for the Palestinian people. Last week, I announced a $500 million advance from Britain, if we can solve the security problems, to provide jobs for the Palestinian people. I have now talked to other world leaders and they will be prepared to support this fund if we can make progress on security. My hon. Friend rightly says that the levels of poverty and unemployment are intolerable in Gaza and the west bank, and we are ready to do what we can to help people in those areas.

Paul Keetch: The Prime Minister rightly paid tribute to the servicemen killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. The two men killed in Iraq were possibly in a Puma helicopter that was older than some of the personnel it was carrying. When will the Chinook helicopters ordered by the previous Conservative Government for use by our special forces be delivered for use by our special forces?

Gordon Brown: I do not think, despite the tragedy yesterday, that anybody should jump to any conclusions about what has happened. A full investigation should and will take place. I want to pay tribute to the courage, dedication and service of the men who have died.
	As for equipment, we have ordered more helicopters; more helicopters are there on the ground; and we have the biggest defence programme of capital investment over the next 10 years of any Government at any time.

Robert Flello: My right hon. Friend will be aware that primary schools in Stoke-on-Trent have already benefited from about 50 million for rebuilding and refurbishment. With 200 million, we now have a similar opportunity for our high schools and special schools. Given that this is probably a once-in-100-years opportunity, and that it is absolutely vital to get it right, will he agree to meet heads and governors to discuss their proposals for how that money should be spent across the whole city, particularly, in my constituency: St. Joseph's, Trentham high, Longton, Edensor, Blurton and St. Thomas MoreI could go on

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Gordon Brown: My hon. Friend knows his constituency very well. Nineteen schools are being rebuilt in Stoke-on-Trent, and 111 additional classrooms are being refurbished. He is absolutely right: under the building schools for the future programme we have committed to the refurbishment of thousands of schools, primary and secondary, around the country. It would be unfortunate if the Conservative plans announced yesterday were to disrupt a programme whereby people are expecting new schools and new classrooms in the next few years.

Richard Bacon: I do not know why the Prime Minister was smiling a moment ago about HMRC. There are 25 million people who do not think that it is funny at all. Can he explain why the accounts of HMRC have been qualified for the past four years?

Gordon Brown: That has happened on many occasions. I just have to read to the hon. Gentleman from this report. The National Audit Office said that HMRC's performance has not been adversely affected, and that in some areas performance had improved substantially. It added that the adjudicator for HMRC had said that the changes that we brought about in the HMRC had had no negative impact on its customers. HMRC is working as a new unit.

Ben Chapman: Although I accept that we have to have a Post Office network of an appropriate size, the closure of sub-post offices in individual localities is a cause of some concern. Those in my constituency currently under threat, so to speak, are good businesses. They serve a high proportion of the elderly and disabled who do not have an easily accessible alternative, and they act as a funnel for other businesses. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that the consultation being carried out by the Post Office is just that, and not a cover for a foregone conclusion?

Gordon Brown: It is not only a consultation; I invite him to meet the Minister responsible for Post Office matters at the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform to talk about those issues. The fact is that we are putting 1.7 billion into helping the Post Office network. It is true that many post offices are not widely used at all. In some cases, there is single-figure use during the course of one day. There will be a proper consultation and my hon. Friend's local residents will have the chance to have their voices heard.

Andrew Robathan: On the question of trust in this Government, all Members opposite should remember these words about the constitutional treaty:
	We will put it to the British people in a referendum.
	If the Labour party manifesto was deliberately misleading the British people, what faith can anyone have in anything this Government say? What would the Prime Minister normally call somebody who does not tell the truth?

Gordon Brown: The first announcement in Brussels last spring was that the constitutional project had been abandoned. There is no constitutional treaty; it is an amending treaty. We won all our red lines and secured all the agreements that we won. That is why the question for the Conservative party is now whether it will support a referendum, even after ratification.

Ronnie Campbell: Can the Prime Minister tell me why the Barnett formula cannot be applied to the English regions?

Gordon Brown: The Barnett formula is for the whole of the United Kingdom. It is not for one part of the UK. It covers all areas of the United Kingdom, and the formula is based on the needs of each different part.

Edward Leigh: Is the Prime Minister aware that when the Department for Work and Pensions ran child benefit, it did a full audit on 20,000 names? When it was passed to the Inland Revenue, that was cut to 2,000 names, which is why the National Audit Office had to check its figures. Is he further aware that those protocols were agreed at a high level in March between the NAO and the Inland Revenue, and when the NAO asked for narrow detailsnot people's personal bank accountsthe Revenue said that to disaggregate that information would be too burdensome for the organisation? Those decisions were, therefore, taken at a high level. Is that not the image of a department that has had too much work loaded on it at the same time as it is cutting staff?

Gordon Brown: The hon. Gentleman raises a point that will be the subject of the investigation. I have to tell him that there is a dispute about what the NAO and HMRC said to each other about these particular data, but the important part of the inquiry is that it will reveal the truth of what happened.

Anne Moffat: I congratulate the Government on acknowledging veterans, most recently the Bevin boys, for their contribution during the war. Will my right hon. Friend give positive consideration to recognising the Land Army girls who worked tirelessly under extreme conditions for their nation during the same conflict?

Gordon Brown: My hon. Friend makes an important point, and the Government are sympathetic to the case for recognising the work of the Women's Land Army. We are looking carefully at how that should be done, and we shall report back to the House in due course.

David Heathcoat-Amory: Is the Prime Minister aware of the damage caused to the landscape of Britain by wind turbines, which are often opposed [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Speaker: Order.

David Heathcoat-Amory: They are often opposed by local people, then imposed by planning inspectors implementing Government targets for renewable energy. If the Prime Minister is serious about climate change, will he urgently restart Britain's nuclear programme and stop industrialising the uplands of Britain with wind farms that are ugly, inefficient and unreliable?

Gordon Brown: No wonder the Leader of the Opposition is blushing and going redhis party is all talk and no action.

Mr. Speaker: We now come to the main business [ Interruption. ] Hon. Members must leave the Chamber quietly.

Point of Order

Paul Goodman: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. A week ago, the Prime Minister guaranteed in the House that copies of the successful bids for 6 million to prevent extremism would be placed in the Library. A week later, those documents are not in the Library, which has received a message from Downing street saying that there is no timetable for their delivery. What can you do, Mr. Speaker, to ensure that the Prime Minister's pledge to the House is honoured and that scrutiny of that 6 million by right hon. and hon. Members is allowed to proceed? After all, we do not want any further financial problems, do we?

Mr. Speaker: I will look at the record in  Hansard. If the words spoken by the Prime Minister are exactly as the hon. Gentleman says, and I have no reason to doubt that they are, I would expect a promise made by a Minister on the Floor of the Housewhether by the Prime Minister or any other Ministerto be carried out. Let me look at  Hansard, and I will get back to him. If it is as he says, and a Minister has made a pledge on scrutiny in the House, I will see to it that those documents are placed in the Library.

Opposition Day
	  
	[1st allotted day]

Schools Reform

Mr. Speaker: We now come to the first debate on the Opposition motions. I inform the House that in each debate I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister. Under the powers that have been given to me, the speeches of both Front-Bench spokesmen, and the spokesman of the third-largest political party represented in the House, will be restricted to 20 minutes.

Michael Gove: I beg to move,
	That this House expresses its concern over recent reports that the Government is retreating on the Academies programme and calls on the Secretary of State to restore the freedom of Academies to operate outside the National Curriculum, to take steps to liberate them further from local authority control, and to recognise that Academies should act as a spur and encouragement to local authorities by pioneering innovative new approaches to helping the most disadvantaged; and further believes that the Academies programme should be expanded and accelerated with not only more Academies but also greater freedoms for new providers who wish to open all-ability schools in the state sector.
	First, may I say what a pleasure it is to see the Secretary of State in his place today? Some of us imagined that after the events of the past 24 hours he might well have enjoyed a rapid promotion back to the Treasury, where he would sit at the right hand of the Gord. We will probably have to wait a few weeks before that miraculous assumption happens.
	Talking of biblical themes, my mission today is to adapt the words of St. Francis of Assisi and see whether, where there is discord, we can bring harmony. I refer, of course, to the need to heal the breach in the Labour party on education and bring the Secretary of State back into line and on to the side of real reform. One of the most worrying aspects of the Secretary of State's tenure is a crab-like inching away from the proper reform programme, which began under Tony Blair. In recent weeks, that process has taken on the aspect of a full-scale invertebrate retreat.
	It was all so different only two years ago. In those days, the Government had a reputation for competence, and the Secretary of State was only a Back Bencher. The two may or may not be related. Only two years ago, the country was led by a Prime Minister who, whatever his defects, knew where he wanted to take the country. Now, we are led by a Prime Minister who, because of his defects, dare not even go to the country. Only two years ago, there was an emerging consensus on the need for the Government to promote a public sector reform vision, driven by greater pluralism, diversity and choice. Now, there is a growing consensus that the Government do not have a vision and that they are paralysed by cronyism, incompetence and weakness.
	Nowhere has that abandonment of a progressive vision been more worrying than in education. On many occasions, the Secretary of State has revealed his anti-reform instincts. I shall run through them shortly. However, there is still timeand hope, in my breast, at least, if not on the Labour Back Benches, that he may yet come good.

Nicholas Soames: I doubt that.

Michael Gove: I know that some of my hon. Friends doubt that, but I am a generous soul and I like to think that a young lad could rise to the occasion, on this day at least. I hope that he will take the opportunity that the debate presents to repent of his errors or, at the very least, to turn over a new leaf and make clear his commitment to reform.

David Laws: May I test the hon. Gentleman on his commitment to turning over a new leaf? If he became Secretary of State, would he give permission to a Conservative local authority, such as Buckinghamshire, that presented proposals for a new grammar school?

Michael Gove: It is normally the Labour party that raises grammar schools when it wants to divert attention from the divisions in its ranks. However, I can understand, given what is happening to the hon. Gentleman's candidate for the leadership of the Liberal Democratsthe so-called Calamity Cleggwhy he wants to divert attention.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman should know that there are courtesies in the House, and that he should not have used that term.

Michael Gove: I apologise for drawing attention to the divisions in the Liberal Democrat party in that way. The hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) invites me to talk about our policyit is the same as it has always been. In those areas that retain the 11-plus, demographic change may mean that additional provision is needed, but we are not in favour of restoring it. In that respect at least, there is a measure of consensus in the House, although it may sometimes be broken by the aggressive instincts of the Minister for Schools and Learners when he is anxious to assert his pit bull characteristics.

Tom Levitt: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Michael Gove: Not at this stage, but I will give way later.
	Speaking of pit bull characteristics, the hon. Gentleman inevitably tries to intervene because he wants to acquire a reputation as the Rottweiler of the Back Benches. I am afraid that he must stay in his kennel for another couple of minutes. [Hon. Members: Down boy.] Indeed.
	My purpose, in spelling out some of the matters on which the Government have slipped back in the reform agenda and pointing out ways in which they can fruitfully take matters forward, is constructive. I want the Secretary of State to realise that his tenure will be wasted if he listens to the reactionary voices in his party urging him to give producer interests and the complacent establishment a chance. I want to give him the chance to deploy his intellectual gifts, which are still there, and the powers of his office in the service of reform, which will make opportunity more equal and help the disadvantaged most. My challenge to him is to be a moderniser.
	Two years ago, there was a modernising consensus in the House of Commons. It drove the Education and Inspections Bill through and put it on the statute book, thanks to Conservative Members' votes. The current Secretary of State was deeply unhappy with that at the time, as he told the  New Statesman. However, that consensus was built on a powerful set of insights. Improvements in education had to be driven by not only a relentless focus on standards but a proper reform of structures.
	In 2005, when the Blair Government published their education White Paper, the then Prime Minister and the then Secretary of State argued for greater pluralism and diversity in schools. They anticipated the development of fully independent schools in the state system. They hoped that local education authorities would play a progressively smaller role. They hoped that all new state schools would be created outside local authority embrace, and cited Florida and Sweden as exemplars. They looked at those states that had enacted thoroughgoing supply side reform with greater parental choice as their models. Schools outside local authority control, such as academies, would act as a goad and a spur to improvement. They would utilise their freedoms to pioneer new ways of doing things. They would also provide parents with a new choice: to take children out of failing schools and place them in more successful ones.

Helen Jones: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Michael Gove: That choice would mean new competition within the public sector, which would drive up standards. Will the hon. Lady say whether she still cleaves to that visionthe vision on which Tony Blair was elected in 2005?

Helen Jones: The hon. Gentleman talks about parental choice, but what he would say to the Conservatives in Warrington, who, along with the Liberal Democrats, are closing Woolston high school, contrary to parents' wishes, while refusing to conduct a review of other schools in the borough? What is his message to his friends who are closing a vastly improved school, contrary to the wishes of people in the area?

Michael Gove: My message to them is that I sympathise with them, because of the surplus places rule and the funding arrangements, both of which were put in place by the Government. If they campaign on Conservative proposals for greater choice and control, they will have a Conservative MP in Warrington, as part of a Conservative Government delivering for parents. There is powerful evidence

Tom Levitt: rose

Michael Gove: I see that the hon. Gentleman is attempting to slip out of the doghouse.

Tom Levitt: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is delivering his speech with his customary wit and charmwell worth the 1,000 a week that  The Times pays him for pontificating on its pages. If he were to come to Chapel-en-le-Frith in my constituency, he would see a new high school and a new infant school, both of which have been built to replace schools that the previous Tory Government did not replace, even though they were completely derelict. Those schools were built as part of a plan to address the capital replacement needs of schoolsa plan that his party has abandoned this week. Is that not completely irresponsible and reckless of him?

Michael Gove: I will tell the hon. Gentleman what is completely irresponsible and reckless: making an intervention without studying the facts. I am afraid that he is completely wrong in his idea that we would abandon the building schools for the future programme. He must insist that the Government Whips Office supplies him with better questions. I like the hon. Gentleman and I enjoy his interventions, but quality needs to rise. I would like to see greater competition from his colleagues, so that he can feel involved and give us better interventions, and we can all benefit.
	There is already powerful evidence that choice and competition work. In Hackney, the presence of new academies, such as Mossbourne community academy, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) and I were privileged to visit yesterday, has driven up standards, not just for those who attend them, but for all schools. In Sweden, where a more thoroughgoing process of opening up the supply side has taken place, there is a direct correlation between the number of new independent schools in the state sector in a municipality and improvement in standards overall.
	Reform brings results. But the question everyone is asking is: does the Secretary of State believe in real reform? There are several reasons why we fear that he does not. The first is the Secretary of State's complete failure so far to make the case that choice, competition and contestability drive up standards. Professor Julian Le Grand, the then Prime Minister's senior policy adviser between 2003 and 2005, has written thousands of eloquent words making the case for choice. The preface to the 2005 education White Paper made the case. The co-ordinator of the 2005 general election victory, the right hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn), has made the case. He said:
	As a parent I don't want power in the hands of either councils or schools...I want it in my hands. This is the new political agenda.
	The idea of extending choice to individuals in how they receive public services is more than consumerism. As the right hon. Gentleman said, there is
	a compelling social justice case for doing so. For too long those who can afford it have been able to buy choice over health and education. Those without, do without...State control has not guaranteed equality of outcome...School choice programmes in Sweden, Denmark and the USA...show a beneficial impact on performance across schools as a whole.
	I agree with the right hon. Gentleman's every word, but words such as those have not yet crossed the Secretary of State's lips. Unlike the right hon. Member for Darlington, he has not had the courage to take on the reactionaries in his party, the unions and the establishment, and make the liberal, modernising case. Today he can. We look forward to hearing it. If he fails to make that case, we and the world will draw the appropriate conclusionthat he lacks the bottle to fight for reform.
	A bigger problem than the Secretary of State's failure to make the case for choice, contestability and competition is the way in which his actions have spoken louder than his words, and the way in which he has diluted essential elements of the academy programme. This brings me to the second test that he is failing. He must ensure that academies are free from bureaucracy so that they can perform the functions that they were designed to achieve.

Graham Stuart: I do not like to disagree with my hon. Friend on the Front Bench, but I wonder whether he is being too kind in saying that the Secretary of State lacks the bottle for reform. Looking back over the 10 years of this Labour Government, was it not the Secretary of State's master, the current Prime Minister, who at every stage opposed the reforms of the previous Prime Minister and prevented the excellence from spreading much more widely?

Michael Gove: I am grateful to my hon. Friend; he makes a powerful case. We happy licence fee payers who were fortunate enough to watch The Blair Years on Sunday evening will have seen witness after witness testifying to the way in which the then Chancellor and his aides, supporters and advisers were thwarting the Blairite reform agenda at every turn. But my mum taught me in Sunday school that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, and I believe that, even at this late hour, there is an opportunity for the Secretary of State to embrace the reform agenda. He is intelligent enough to follow the logic; I hope that he is honest enough to recognise that now is the time for real change.

Tony Baldry: rose

David Chaytor: rose

Michael Gove: I will not give way at this stage.
	I want to elucidate one of the areas in which the Secretary of State has so far failed the test. His first act as Secretary of State was to limit the freedom of academies. Under him, academies were stripped of the right to shape their own curriculum and compelled to follow the national curriculum. They were also told that they would have to fall in line with local authority control. Rather than acting as a competitive force outside town hall control and levering up standards, they were to fall under the sway of bureaucrats.
	We have already seen how Labour local authorities have succeeded in thwarting new academies in areas where educational provision is weak and the system desperately needs new providers. In Tower Hamlets, where Goldman Sachs wanted to set up an academy, the local authority said, No, we don't need no competition, even though the standards there are so poor that almost half the secondary schools fail to get 30 per cent. of their pupils to the level of five good GCSE passes, including in maths and English.
	In Hull, another area of educational weakness where more than half the schools fail to reach the acceptable level of 30 per cent. good GCSE grades, another academy sponsor was prevented from establishing a new school by Labour local bureaucracy. These local authorities are emboldened by the Secretary of State's words to resist new entrants and competition. They could make it easier for new suppliers to give brilliant schooling to the disadvantaged, but the Secretary of State's words, and his party, have made that harder.

David Chaytor: I am looking carefully at the Opposition's motion, and I do not understand why the hon. Gentleman thinks that only academies should have the freedom to innovate in the national curriculum. Why should not local authority schools, and all other schools, have that freedom?

Michael Gove: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making a constructive intervention. We want more freedom for schools. This week, we have been talking about greater freedoms. The key point is that, by applying competitive pressure outside local authority control, academies in Hackney have succeeded in driving up standards. That is what we want to see elsewhere, but there has been no evidence that the Secretary of State has grasped that agenda or that he has made the case for it in the way that his predecessors or the previous Prime Minister did.

David Laws: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Michael Gove: Not at this stage.
	To follow on from the intervention by the hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor), the people who designed the academy programme knew that the whole point was that they should operate at a distance from local authorities in order to provide a competitive spur. Dan Corry, the former special adviser at the then Department for Education and Skills, has told us

David Chaytor: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Michael Gove: Not at this stage. I think that this evidence will interest the hon. Gentleman. Dan Corry, who used to advise his near neighbour, the right hon. Member for Bolton, West (Ruth Kelly), said:
	Blair and Adonis had an innate belief that local authorities were at the root of all problems. Blair and Adonis wanted autonomous schools everywhere. Neither wanted local authorities to have any real control.
	Lord Adonis might subsequently have been

Edward Balls: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Michael Gove: Not yet. I was talking about Lord Adonis, and I know why the Secretary of State wants to intervene at this point.
	Lord Adonis might subsequently have been taken to the Admiral Lord West memorial cell in the Downing street Lubyanka and forced to recant under pressure. He might even now be wandering the corridors of the upper House saying, I love big Gordon, but he cannot run away from the record, even though the Secretary of State is now distancing himself from reform. Would the Secretary of State care to make his intervention now?

Edward Balls: If possible, let me inject rather more substance into the debate. Yesterday morning, the hon. Gentleman told the Today programme that academies would be exempt from the national curriculum: he then went on Channel 4 news at lunchtime and said:
	It's clear that any school which is set up is going to have to follow the core aspects of the curriculum that binds all schools.
	Can he explain the contradiction between those two statements?

Michael Gove: Yes, as there is absolutely no contradiction. As the Secretary of State should know, there is a difference between the national curriculum that binds states schools and the curriculum requirements that independent schools have to follow. Under our proposals, academies would have the freedom that independent schools have.

Edward Balls: rose

Michael Gove: I think that I have answered the right hon. Gentleman's question [Interruption.] Oh, very well, I am delighted to give way again.

Edward Balls: Can he tell us the curriculum requirements for science that apply to independent state schools?

Michael Gove: The curriculum requirements of independent state schools and academies have been made more restrictive by the Secretary of State, as he knows.

Edward Balls: rose

Tony Baldry: rose

Michael Gove: I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry).

Tony Baldry: Is it not all about competence? How can our constituents have any confidence in the Government's ability to deliver the educational change that the country needs when they cannot even deliver a letter?

Michael Gove: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point: he is absolutely right. One of the core aspects of competence is unity in government, but there is a clear division between the Secretary of State's position and that of Lord Adonis, as recorded by the Secretary of State's special adviser and academy sponsors. Let us listen to what those who are actually delivering change say. Jennifer Moses of ARK, an academy sponsor, says:
	Rather than forcing academies back into the local authority family, we should be extending their freedoms to more schools.
	She agrees with the hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) and with me, but not with the Secretary of State. And who has been most delighted at the retreat? It is those in the union movement, who never wanted academies to have freedom in the first place. Steve Sinnott of the National Union of Teachers says:
	I welcome Ed Balls' statement giving local authorities a greater say in the planning of academies. This is a direction of travel of which I thoroughly approve.
	So there we have the Secretary of Statepraised by the producer interests; disappointing the providers of academies; siding with the existing establishment; making life more difficult for those who want to help the most disadvantaged; U-turning from the position once held by his Government and still held by his junior Minister; and retreating from reform.

Edward Balls: I apologise to the hon. Gentleman for diverting him from his text, but on the particular issue of the curriculum of independent schools, I have before me the regulations that apply to independent schools. They say that schools should draw up
	a written policy on the curriculum,
	which would give pupils experience in
	linguistic, mathematical, scientific, technological, human and social, physical and aesthetic... education.
	All they have to do is draw up a curriculum, but the hon. Gentleman suggested on Channel 4 News that the curriculum would stop the teaching of creationism in schools, so he must have been talking about the national curriculum. It is the national curriculum that will stop the teaching of creationism, not the independent curriculum rules. If he is saying that the rules will apply to all schools, why will they not apply to academies?

Michael Gove: I was looking forward to the Secretary of State's intervention and hoped that it might be illuminating, but he is going down a curious alleyand a blind one at that. The Secretary of State and I both agree that the teaching of creationism should not be part of science teaching, and we also agree that there is a distinction between the national curriculum as it applies to state schools and the curriculum that applies to independent schools. We want to give academies the same freedom that independent schools haveone of those clear dividing lines of which the Secretary of State is fond. If the Secretary of State wanted to argue for restricting academy freedom, we would be interested; if he wanted to argue for extending academy freedom, we would be delighted; if he wanted to argue in favour of creationism, I would be fascinated; and if he wanted to join us in saying that religious fundamentalism should play no part in the school curriculum, I would be overjoyed. However, the Secretary of State is attempting to make a distinction without a difference.

Jim Knight: rose

David Chaytor: rose

Michael Gove: I am keen to make progress by listing another aspect of Government retreat.
	I want to refer to another bureaucratic change, apparently small in scale, which provides telling evidence of what is happening at the Department for Children, Schools and Families. The Department's decision to place the academies programme within the ambit of the building schools for the future programme has meant that all new academies are now managed by the partnership for schools quango. Thanks to this Government's change, the construction of all new academies and the building of extensions to existing academies are managed by a centralised bureaucracy.
	Far from academies introducing welcome diversity, every new academy has its design, building, layout and even its project management dictated from the centre. Academy sponsors are not allowed to specify any aspect of design or choose the project managers for construction. They are not even allowed to meet the project managers and are permitted only the most limited role during construction. They put up the cash, bear the risk and want to help, but are treated like conscripts.
	That policy is already having malign and perverse effects. Among the many virtues of Mossbourne academy in Hackney, which I visited yesterday with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, is the fact that it is a Richard Rogers partnership building an exceptionally handsome architectural landmark. Mossbourne wants to expand: it has been so successful that it needs to establish a sixth form and build an extension. However, it cannot ask the Richard Rogers partnership to build the extension because it is not on the building schools for the future programme approved list, so it is denied the chance to get the same visionary architect to construct a visionary addition to a visionary building because of the Department's blinkered bureaucracy.
	Can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, if, when they were building St. Paul's, Christopher Wren had been told by the building cathedrals for the future bureaucrat that he could not do that dome after all, because he was not on the Department's list of state-approved builders? Of course, Sir Christopher Wren placed his own inscription there: if you require my monument, look around you. If people look at academies in the future and see that something visionary has been obscured and messed up by something wholly inappropriate and bureaucratically foolish stuck on later, perhaps they will say that if we want a monument to Ed Balls, there it is!

Si�n Simon: Surely the hon. Gentleman understands perfectly well that in the future people will look around them and see hundreds and hundreds of brand-new schools built by a Labour Government, which had previously been left to rot for generations by the Tories [Interruption.] Fourteen Etonians!

Michael Gove: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that vigorous interventionand also for drawing attention to the lack of Etonians on the Front Bench. The hon. Gentleman is an old friend of mine and a man of prodigious talent. It is a great pity that someone of his formidable intellect is putting it at the service of class war. He will, I know, receive his reward from the Government in due course, but he does not need to assert his prolier-than-thou credentials in order to win his place on the Front Bench.

David Chaytor: Let us return to the question of academies. Will the hon. Gentleman remind us how many of them are currently in operation? How many years have they been in operation and what miraculous assumption leads him to believe that we have the evidence to justify the massive expansion of academies that he suggests?

Michael Gove: The success of academies, which are overwhelmingly popular with parents in their communities, in driving up standards and in transforming the educational environment in areas such as Hackney, seems to meand perhaps to the Secretary of State, given some of his commentsto provide arguments for their continuation. I am interested in hearing more from the Secretary of State about what he thinks of academies. We all know that I support them. What we are worried about is whether the Secretary of State supports them in name only and whether he has the intellectual courage to make the case for choice and contestability.

Julie Kirkbride: My hon. Friend has a prodigious memory, and he might like to draw the attention of the hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) to the fact that academies developed from an earlier prototype of city technology colleges, which were pioneered by the previous Conservative Government.

Michael Gove: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that excellent point. It was indeed city technology colleges that acted as a template for the academy programme. I am sure that the hon. Member for Bury, North, who, like me, believes in social justice, would be interested to know that city technology colleges, which have a comprehensive intake, actually have better GCSE results than independent schoolsa point that we are proud of and that I hope the Secretary of State will embrace in his speech.
	As I said at the beginning of my speech, I hope that the Secretary of State takes this opportunity to repent. It would not quite be a deathbed conversionhe is not quite there yetbut it might help him recover from the difficult position that he is in. He has grave difficulties convincing anyone that he is a real reformer. As I have mentioned, only this week we heard on the BBC how the Secretary of State has been an enemy of reform, for years inciting rebellion against former Prime Minister Tony Blair's education reforms. Last week, I referred to the right hon. Gentleman as the Kim Philby of this Government, outwardly a member of the establishment while all the time secretly working for the Stalinists. I am afraid, however, that my Soviet history was awry. I now realise that he was actually more like one of those grey men from the Kremlin who led the plot against Gorbachev. He launched an abortive coup against a halfway sincere reformist only to end up making himself and his cronies look foolish, and leaving the country desperate for real change at the top.

Rob Marris: The hon. Gentleman is being generous in giving way, but may I get him off the personal attacks and on to the substance of the debate? For competition and choice to work, there must be surplus places, otherwise that is rationing. How many surplus places would a Conservative Government be prepared to pay for?

Michael Gove: Lord Adonis yesterday attempted on the radio to argue that the surplus places rule did not exist under this Government, but that runs directly contrary to the evidence. The Government have said in their guidance circular that [Interruption.] He asked about surplus places, and I am responding. The Government guidance states that surplus places returns help them
	monitor whether local authorities are taking action to reduce
	the numbers. The question that the Government must answer is whether a surplus places rule applies? Lord Adonis yesterday on Radio 4 said no, but the Government's guidance, policed by the Audit Commission, says that 10 per cent. of surplus places is the absolute limit.
	Our view is that we should allow the development of between 20,000 and 30,000 new school places every year in order to ensure that we can provide an expansion in a new academies programme. The arguments are laid out in our green paper on education, Raising the Bar, closing the gap. It is do with providing opportunity for all, and I recommend it to the hon. Gentleman and look forward to hearing more discussion of it.

Bob Spink: Would my hon. Friend's policy therefore be to stop the county councils that are planning to close excellent secondary schools, such as one in my constituency on Canvey Island, from doing so? Would he have them put such plans on ice until we see what the effect will be of, for example, extending compulsory education to 18?

Michael Gove: My hon. Friend characteristically makes two good points. We are clear that we should get rid of the surplus places rule and that new entrants to the state education system will provide a goad and a spur to existing local authority schools to improve. Whether in Essex or, as we have seen, in Hackney, new schools entering the system force the existing local authority schools to raise their game and improve their act. That is a virtuous competitive circle, which we would like to be extended, in line with the best Conservative principles, across the country.

Jim Knight: I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way: it shows uncharacteristic politeness. Let me explain the situation: schools can be started up in areas with surplus places, but there is a built-in motivation for the local authority to close underperforming schools in exchange, so that there is a net relationship between the two that conforms to the surplus places rule. What is important is that we motivate local authorities to close underperforming schools, unlike the Conservative party's proposals.

Michael Gove: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his elucidation of the existence of a surplus places rule, in contrast with what we were told yesterday on Radio 4 by Lord AdonisI am grateful that the hon. Gentleman has overruled his junior colleague in the House of Lords. Our point is that we want those new entrants that the Government have not allowed to come into the state sector to drive up standards all round. We do not want to see schools close; we want to see schools improve. We do not want the zero-sum game of statist control that we have had in the past 10 years; we want diversity of provision. We want reform, choice and competition to drive up standards.

John Bercow: Will my hon. Friend give way?

John Redwood: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Michael Gove: I will be delighted to give way: I shall do so first to my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (John Bercow).

John Bercow: Given that local authorities are virtually omnipotent as the bodies that assess and decide on, and pay for and provide, services to children with special educational needs, does my hon. Friend agree with me and, rather more importantly, with the Education and Skills Committee that the time has come for the link between assessment and the funding of provision to be broken?

Michael Gove: The hon. Gentlemanmy hon. Friend in fact, and a very good friend, toomakes a characteristically good and well judged point.  [Interruption.] No, I am not surprised; I am delighted about that. His point is in line with the recommendations of Sir Robert Balchin's special educational needs commission, and it would be interesting to know whether the Secretary of State agrees with it. I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I look forward to agreeing also with another wise eminence on the Conservative Back Benches, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood).

John Redwood: Does my hon. Friend agree that the people involved in a school are much more important even than its buildings, and that some of the best schools have old or tatty buildings? Is not the failure of this Government's strategy that they have no way of changing the leadership in underperforming schools and they have allowed too many such schools to exist for too long?

Michael Gove: My right hon. Friend makes an important point: among the most important qualities in schools are leadership, motivation and personnel. One of the great virtues of academies is that their leaderssuch as Sir Michael Wilshaw at Mossbournehave the freedom to pay more than the national minimum and to reward good staff with bonuses. They also have the opportunity to recruit and retain the best, and, if necessary, to deal with any weaker teachers. I am sorry to have to say that some of the teaching unions oppose that degree of freedom, but we believe that it is concomitant with the greater freedom in the academy system and that it is necessary to drive up standards, which is our aim.
	Unfortunately, there has been a pattern under this Government: instead of change and dynamism, there has been timidity, retreat, paralysis and bureaucracy. We would remove barriers to the creation of new schools.

Si�n Simon: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Michael Gove: Not yet. We would ensure that money followed the pupil and, crucially, that pupils from the most disadvantaged homes got more money for their schoolinga progressive policy that I think the Liberal Democrats share, but the Government reject. We would demand high standards, ensuring that every child who can do so is reading after their first two years in primary school, because having learnt to read, they can read to learn. We would restore discipline to our schools, shifting the balance of power in the classroom back in favour of the teacher.

Several hon. Members: rose

Michael Gove: No, I will not give way.
	We would then liberate innovative professionals to deliver inspirational teaching. On the Labour Benches, there is an agenda of stasis, centralism and state control. On the Opposition Benches, there is an agenda of change, optimism and hope, which is making the defeat of ignorance its central mission.
	I invite the Secretary of State to break free from the tight Treasury embrace that has constricted his free thinking over the past 10 years, and to embrace reform and prove himself to be a moderniser.

Edward Balls: I beg to move, To leave out from 'House' to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
	'notes that investment and reform in schools since 1997 has raised standards and cut the number of underperforming schools, with 100,000 more 11 year olds reaching the required level of literacy than 10 years ago and the number of schools where less than a quarter of pupils achieve five good GCSEs cut from 616 in 1997 to just 26 today; further notes that 83 Academies have already opened, with 230 to be opened by 2010, with more to come as the Government accelerates its successful Academies programme; confirms that over 30 schools became Trust schools in September with over 170 more in the pipeline; welcomes the Government's Building Schools for the Future programme which will rebuild or refurbish every secondary school in the country; and supports further reforms to extend educational opportunity for all and not just some, including the introduction of Diplomas and, alongside an expansion of apprenticeships and enhanced support for 16 and 17 year olds through the Education Maintenance Allowance, raising the education and training age to 18 by 2015.'.
	It is a great pleasure to have the opportunity to debate once again with the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove). In respect of any failure to pursue school reforms, I hope that we can achieve some clarity about what the Government are actually saying and, perhaps even more hopefully and after all the contradictions in the hon. Gentleman's policy over the past few days, that we can get some clarity about the Opposition education policy. I have to say that we got very little clarity on that from his performance. We once again had the usual bluster and flourish. It was a nice speech; it was well written, and the hon. Gentleman read it rather well, tooand I can honestly say that we have been impressed by how much he is impressed by himself. Unfortunately, although the speech was strong on style, it was hopelessly weak on content and policy.
	The debate is billed as being about the failure of the Government to pursue school reform but, as has been said, the Opposition motion focuses on just 83 of the 22,500 schools in England today. I am happy to have our approach to academies scrutinised. I fear that by the end of the debate it will be the hon. Gentleman's so-called new academies policy that will need to be scrutinised, because the real revelation of this debate will be that he cannot answer key questions on his own policy. I will show that at best he is simply copying what we are doing and that at worst he is not only confused but putting forward risky proposals. Conservative Members would do well to study the details of the proposals that he has announced this week. I will show that when they do so, they will see what the proposals mean for their constituencies. I fear that as this debate goes on, it may come as a bit of a surprise.

Andrew Robathan: I would like to talk about the details in my constituency. Last week, the Secretary of State said categoricallythis is in  Hansardthat Leicestershire was the 34th best-funded education authority in the country. In fact, it ranks 149th this year, and will do so next year, in 2009 and in 2010. Will he apologise to the people of my constituency and Leicestershire for misleading them last week?

Edward Balls: Of course I will not, because I did not mislead the House last week. I have looked at  Hansard, and I said clearly that although I accept that Leicestershire has a lower spending level per pupil than other areas, it will have the 34th largest increase in spending in the next three years. It was in our statement to the House, and it is clearly shown in  Hansard. The thing that surprises me about today's motion is that it does not mention any of the reforms that we have been putting in place over the past 10 years. It does not mention numeracy and literacy; more teachers; more than 1,000 new schools; new disciplinary powers for head teachers; or the fact that more than 85 per cent. of schools are now called specialist schools. It does not point out that over the past 10 years we have delivered rising standards year on year or that we have reduced the number of schools not getting a quarter of their pupils to the standard of five good GCSEs from 616 at the end of the Conservative Government in 1997 to just 26 today.

Philip Davies: rose

Edward Balls: I will give way in a second.
	We know that there is more to do to reach a world-class level, but, again, the motion does not refer to any of the processes that we have set in place in recent months to take forward our next stage of reform. It does not refer to the Every Child a Reader programme and our plans to spread phonics across the country. It does not refer to our one-to-one learning in primary and secondary schools, to our new independent standards regulator, to our 30 new trust schools, to our building schools for the future programme, to our new powers and obligations on local authorities to intervene to tackle failing schools, or to our children's plan proposals to strengthen links between schools, parents and children's servicesagain, that got no mention in the speech by the hon. Member for Surrey Heath.

David Laws: The Secretary of State is yet to give a convincing explanation for his asking the delivery unit in 10 Downing street to look into the academies programme. Will he tell us which academies the delivery unit is examining, and whether Lord Adonis was present at the seminar on 1 November?

Edward Balls: I will come to academies in a moment. Like the hon. Member for Surrey Heath, I will answer all the detailed points that are raised in the debate.
	The truth is that while the Opposition criticise our reforms, they are either stealing our clothes or putting forward risky proposals. The Opposition say that we need to implement synthetic phonics, but we are implementing the Rose review and the systematic teaching of phonics is now compulsory across the countryit is already being inspected by Ofsted. The same is true on the confiscation of mobile phones, because on Monday the hon. Gentleman announces that that is his policy, but it turns out that such powers exist for head teachers in the Education and Inspections Act 2006. To give him some latitude, he did make a new proposal to abolish appeals panels for excluded pupils. That would mean the abolition of appeals panels first introduced by the Conservatives in 1987 and, contrary to what he said on the Marr programme, the policy has been rejected by head teachers. The same is true of his plan to ask pupils to re-sit their final year at primary school and of the Conservatives' proposals to have compulsory externally marked tests at six. All those ideas are rejected by head teachers and parents.

Nick Gibb: The Secretary of State talks about synthetic phonics. Why is the Every Child a Reader programme, which uses reading recovery as its reading programme, not a synthetic phonics programme, in line with the Rose recommendations?

Edward Balls: As the hon. Gentleman knows, it is for every school to decide, child by child, how they teach reading. We are implementing phonics and synthetic phonics across every school in the country by the Ofsted review. The Every Child a Reader programme is particularly tailored to the needs of every individual child. Of course phonics are being used in that programme and in every primary school across the country.

Gordon Marsden: My right hon. Friend rightly listed a raft of things to which the Opposition motion does not refer. Is he surprised, like I am, by the fact that it does not refer to the collaboration and co-operation needed across local education authorities on the academies programme? The Government have implemented that by a process of incorporation in the national curriculum; the Conservatives propose to take it out.

Edward Balls: Of course that is the case. The majority of the first 30 trusts that have been put forward since September are collaborating between schools precisely to ensure that we focus on raising standards for all children and spread the excellent leadership in some schools to all schools. I do not apologise for saying that collaboration is an important part of our programme.

Rob Marris: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the motion demonstrates the lack of knowledge and the bankruptcy of Conservative policy on schools? The motion on the Order Paper is headed Government policy on schools reform. Despite that, it does not contain a single word on the primary schools sector, which the majority of pupils in the state sector attend. That shows that the Conservatives know nothing about where our kids go to school.

Edward Balls: Of course my hon. Friend is right. We are implementing the policies that work. The new policies put forward by the hon. Member for Surrey Heath are increasingly rejected by head teachers, schools and parents alike.

Several hon. Members: rose

Edward Balls: I shall give way in a moment.
	I find it impossible to understand the position of the hon. Member for Surrey Heath and the Leader of the Opposition on grammar schools and grammar streams. We were being told a few months ago that grammar streams would be introduced in every school in the country. It is unclear whether that has been dropped in favour of setting in every subject or in favour of our policy of encouraging setting in individual subjects.
	What about grammar schools? Does the hon. Member for Surrey Heath agree with the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts)? He said that
	academic selection entrenches advantage and does not spread it.
	Does he agree with the hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson), who said that he wanted a return to good old-fashioned academic selection? Or does he agree with the Tory Buckinghamshire cabinet lead on education, Marion Clayton? When asked whether plans for a new grammar school in Aylesburyit would be the first new grammar school for 50 yearswould contradict Conservative policy, she told the local paper:
	I reject the idea that this goes against current Conservative policy.
	It is certainly against this Government's policy and against the law, but is it against current Conservative policy?
	On Sunday, the hon. Member for Surrey Heath told the Marr programme that plans for new grammar schools, such as those proposed by Conservative Buckinghamshire, are
	a matter for local authorities.
	On the Today programme on Tuesday, when asked whether he would say no to any application for a grammar school, he replied, Absolutely. What is his policy? Is it his Sunday or his Tuesday policy? Would he like to clarify it now? Would the Conservatives change the law to allow Buckinghamshire to set up a new grammar school? Is the answer yes or no? I would be happy to give way to him on that question [Interruption.] Again, no clarity there then. We just saw the barely concealed reality, behind all the obfuscation, that large swathes of his party want him to reintroduce selection. At some point, he and his party leader will have to come off the fence on that issue.

John Redwood: If the Secretary of State wishes to show substance, he should talk about the Government's policy rather than spend the whole time talking about Opposition policyI know that he has no style. Will he tell the House why the Government do not trust parents to make choices in enough cases and why they do not trust schools to decide how to teach?

Edward Balls: Let me turn to academies and the exact issue that the right hon. Gentleman raises. At last, we are dealing with a school reform that is mentioned in the motion.
	Academies are central to our reforms to promote excellence for all and not just the few. The ability to replace a weak or seriously underperforming school with a new school that has new leadership and a new ethos is a crucial part of local strategies to tackle failing schools. So far, the evidence from our first 83 academiesevidence we are testing further with the Prime Minister's delivery unit across the whole programmeis that academies are delivering faster than average improvements in results in areas and, crucially, with intakes that are disproportionately disadvantaged.
	In the motion and in his speech, the hon. Member for Surrey Heath says that we are retreating on academies. I know that he wishes we were, but in fact we are accelerating our programme and removing barriers so that, for example, more universities will find it easier to sponsor academies. Our target was 200 academies by 2010, on the road to 400, but last week my hon. Friend the Minister for Schools and Learners announced that we are now planning for 230 academies by 2010.
	So far, 12 universities have expressed interest in the programme and I can make two announcements today. Three further universitiesKing's college, London, Bolton and Gloucestershireare announcing today that they will engage with the academies programme. Secondly, I have today given the go-ahead for three new academies: the Nottingham university Samworth academy and academies in Croydon and Cheltenham. They will all replace underperforming schools. The hon. Gentleman's charge that we are backsliding on academies is wrong.

David Laws: Given the Secretary of State's warm words about academies, why has he still not explained his reason for asking the No. 10 delivery unit to look into the policy, which suggests he has some concerns about it? Furthermore, he has still not answered the question about whether Lord Adonis was present at the seminar on 1 November.

Edward Balls: The answer is exactly the same as the one I gave last week when the hon. Gentleman asked me exactly the same question. When there are large spending programmes it is perfectly normal for the Treasury, the PMD unit and Departments to look at the detail of individual elements to make sure that they work as well as we want in delivering value for money. We are doing that with the academies programme, just as we would with any other programme, and I make no apology whatever for that. Of course, I have had discussions with Lord Adonis and the delivery unit to make sure that the programme continues to deliver what we wantit is doing so. The idea that I should apologise for ensuring that there is proper scrutiny and we get value for money is completely absurd.

Stewart Jackson: I listened carefully to the Secretary of State's reply to the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws), but is not the truth that the decision to hold a review is political? It is more about compromising the future of academies, including the largest one in England, Thomas Deacon academy in my constituency, while capitulating to the bovine instincts of Labour Back Benchers and the teaching unions.

Edward Balls: Of course it is not. That is a completely absurd intervention. It is in the normal pattern of Government to scrutinise spending effectively, which is what I am doing. Furthermore, I am announcing new academies and accelerating the programme. Saying things over and over again does not make them true, and the hon. Member for Surrey Heath should wake up to that factwe are accelerating the programme, not slowing it down.

Michael Gove: It is always lovely to hear from the Secretary of State that saying things over and over again does not make them true. It is a lesson I hope he will take to heart. However, the key point is that there is one thing he has not said at allnever mind over and over againwhich is that academies, as new providers, give choice, competition and contestability. That is what drives up standards, so will he take the opportunity we have given him today to affirm that that is the case and that he agrees with what the right hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn) and others have argued?

Edward Balls: I fear that the hon. Gentleman cannot have been listening to my speech. I said that where schools are underperforming or failing we are bringing in new leadership, new choice and a new ethos, thereby allowing parents a new choice about the school their children attend. That is exactly what we are about. I pointed out that more than 85 per cent. of schools are specialist, thus providing parents with choice.

Angela Watkinson: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Edward Balls: No.
	The hon. Member for Surrey Heath said that we were wrong to require academies to follow the national curriculum in the core subjects of English, maths, science and IT. Yet again however, as we heard earlier in relation to grammar schools, the hon. Gentleman cannot answer the difficult questions. He cannot explain the contradictions in what he says not just from one day to the next, but from one interview to the next on the same day.

Graham Stuart: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Edward Balls: No.
	The hon. Member for Surrey Heath told the Today programme that academies should be exempt from the national curriculum. That was in the morning. Later, on Channel 4 news, he was asked about creationism. He said:
	It's clear that any school which is set up is going to have to follow the core aspects of the curriculum that bind all schools.
	There is nothing at all in the independent schools guidance that binds schools on the teaching of science or creationism. The only way

Michael Gove: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Edward Balls: No.

Michael Gove: Why not?

Edward Balls: Because I want to explain my point.
	In respect of science, the only way that state schools are bound is through the national curriculum, so on Channel 4 news at lunchtime when the hon. Gentleman said any school, was he including academies? My answer would be yes, but what is his answer? Does he include academies in the requirement to teach the national curriculum on science? Yes or no?

Michael Gove: Will the Secretary of State tell us how many independent schools teach creationism?

Edward Balls: In these debates, we should try to get to the substance and have some discussion of policy [ Interruption. ] The point is that I have made it a requirement that academies follow maths, science and IT, because I believe it is the right thing for them to do. To deal in part with the creationism point, I am making it clear that academies will follow the science curriculum. That is what the hon. Gentleman said on Channel 4 news yesterday, yet when I ask him whether he agrees with what he said yesterday, he cannot answer. If he was not referring to the national curriculum, what does he mean? He says that the national curriculum would bind all schools [ Interruption. ] I will read the quotation again. The hon. Gentleman said:
	It's clear that any school which is set up is going to have to follow the core aspects of the curriculum that bind all schools.
	What does he mean by that if he is not referring to the national curriculum? He cannot be referring to the independent schools guidance, because it includes nothing at all on the content of science. He must have been referring to the national curriculum, but that contradicts what he said in the morning. I keep asking the question, but as with almost everything else, he cannot give me an answer.
	Yesterday, we found out what the hon. Gentleman's real plan is. He proposes to create 220,000 additional secondary school places in what he calls new academies. He tries to claim that those new academies are different because they can be set up by parents, but where parents want to set up schools we have already supported them in doing so. The first parent-promoted school was opened in Lambeth in September, with our support. What is different about the hon. Gentleman's proposalas was made clear in his speechis that the commissioning role of local government will be abolished. So yes, there is a difference of view between us and him on that issue.
	The Government believe there is a vital role for local government in driving change in local areas and turning round or replacing weak or underperforming schools. That is the commissioning role we set out in the 2006 legislation for which the Conservatives voted. That legislation gives local government a duty to raise standards in all schools and act as commissioner for education in their area, to be held to account for the performance of schools in their area and to use all the levers at their disposal, including trusts and academies, to tackle poor performance.
	The hon. Gentleman disagrees with local authorities having that role. He says that he will liberate academies from local authorities, and that I am neutering the programme by working with local government to tackle weak and underperforming schools. So far, 79 local authorities are working with us on academies, and more are coming forward week by weekbut in his view, those are 79 local authorities that are holding back the programme. Nine local authorities are going further still: they are not just working with us but have agreed to co-sponsor academiesor in the hon. Gentleman's view, they are really strangling the programme.
	I shall read the hon. Gentleman the list of culprits: Manchester city council, Labour; Sunderland city council, Labour; the Corporation of London, Independent; Cheshire county council, Conservative; Coventry city council, Conservative; Kensington and Chelsea, Conservative; Kent, Conservative; Telford and Wrekin, Conservative; and West Sussex, Conservative. Has he told those Conservative councils that they are strangling the academies programme? Has he told them their support will no longer be required if the Tories are in power? Has he told them that rather than taking the lead in tackling weak or failing schools, they will have to wait for parents and livery companies in their area to come along and do the work for them? That is where we disagree.
	I want parents to set up schools if they want to do so. I want parents to be able to choose, and I want diversity in the schools system. However, I also want a role for local government, and for it to be accountable for delivering change and tackling underperformance. I want it to do so quickly, rather than waiting while a school's rolls fall year by year, damaging the education of children. That is the dividing line between us: I think that local government should deliver and should be held to account on that delivery, while the hon. Member for Surrey Heath wants to walk away from that. He would allow the market to decide and have vouchers, rather than allowing local government to intervene.

David Laws: I am grateful to the Secretary of State for his patience in agreeing to give way again. Does he agree that there is a danger that he might get the role of local authorities completely wrongand that their role should be strategic oversight, and not necessarily to sponsor or co-sponsor each academy? That could cut against the entire purpose of the academies programme.

Edward Balls: I am sorry that there was not a Liberal Democrat council in the list of councils that sponsor an academy.  [Interruption.] Maybe one will come along. The fact is that we have moved away from requiring local government to run all the schools. Local government now commissions schools and is responsible for key services. Local authorities are also responsible for the education of all children in their area, and accountable for intervening to tackle weak or underperforming schools. That is our policyand the policy of the hon. Member for Surrey Heath would completely undermine it. He is proposing a policy that promotes excellence for a few and not excellence for all. In answer to the question asked by the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws), I believe that for a local authority to sponsor an academy in a particularly difficult or failing school is exactly the right thing to do, and I wish that he would support me on that.

Tom Levitt: In an intervention I made earlier on the hon. Member for Surrey Heath, I suggested that to bring an element of anarchy into the school building programme was reckless and irresponsible. Did the Secretary of State notice that the hon. Gentleman did not choose to deny that?

Edward Balls: Let me turn to the school building programme, because that is where I think

Several hon. Members: rose

Edward Balls: I have already taken many interventions. Let me turn to the point at which things will get particularly interesting for Opposition Members. The hon. Member for Surrey Heath has come forward with a proposal to create 220,000 new school places. To be fair to him, he has told us how he will pay for it. Yesterday he said in black and white in his policy document that the Conservatives would pay for it with a 4.5 billion cut from our building schools for the future programme, which will rebuild or refurbish every secondary school in England over the next 10 years. However, the Conservatives said that they would honour existing commitments under BSF. The impact on the new academies would therefore apply to those waves where commitments have not yet been made, which would be concentrated on the 76 local authority areas in BSF wave 7 onwards that are not yet engaged in BSF.

Nick Gibb: rose

Edward Balls: Let me give hon. Members the details, and then I shall take interventions. The policy would involve taking 4.5 billion out of BSF from 2008-09 onwards. That is a 15 per cent. cut in all future rebuilding projects.  [Interruption.] If I set out the facts for hon. Members, they can then reflect on them.
	More than one in seven secondary schools that hope to undertake rebuilding projects would find that those projects will not go ahead under the Conservative proposals. Two thirds of all secondary schools currently in those 76 authorities are hoping to have schools rebuilt. At the moment, all those new schools are under threat. The 76 local affected authorities would lose an average of 60 million each. The largest local authorities will lose more. That is the equivalent in each local authority area of an average of three complete secondary school rebuilds, which would not go ahead under the Conservative proposals.
	There would be cuts in every area of England, including Oxfordshire and Surrey.

Nick Gibb: rose

Edward Balls: I shall take interventions after I have listed the authorities that would be affected: Barnet, Bath and North East Somerset, Bexley, Bolton, Bracknell Forest, Brent, Brighton and Hove, Bromley, Buckinghamshire and Bury. Those 10 local authorities have 293 schools under threatand that is only the Bs.
	Have Conservative Front Benchers and the Leader of the Opposition checked their policy out with all the Conservative local authorities that will lose out because of those cuts? Were Opposition MPs informed? The new policy would mean that hundreds of schoolsnot only in Labour areas, but in Conservative shire counties across Britainwould lose new schools. I can make a full list of authorities available for Conservative Members to check. It will not make for comfortable reading. We can even let them have a draft press release, if that will help.

Ann Coffey: May I tell my right hon. Friend how pleased I was when he announced the consultation on the prioritisation of the future use of BSF money? At the moment, Stockport is in the last wave. May I tell him how appalled I am to learn that under the Conservative proposals, no money would be given to the local authority to rebuild the schools? We would return to the same situation as in 1996, when we received 1.3 million from the Conservative Government for all the capital spend for all the schools in Stockport.

Edward Balls: I can give my hon. Friend little assurance of what would happen if the Conservative proposals were implemented. Unfortunately, Stockport is among those 76 authorities. There are 13 schools in Stockport, and so two schools would not be rebuilt. Stockport has 16,000 pupils, and none would know where the axe would fall if the proposals were implemented.

Nick Gibb: The Secretary of State is making some sharp political points that are unworthy of him. We are using the building schools for the future programme to build schools throughout the country, including in the boroughs that the Secretary of State and Labour Members have mentioned. How is using BSF to build schools a cut in the programme?

Edward Balls: It is easy to explain. The Conservative proposals would take money away from schools that need it to build surplus places in areas that do not need it. By stripping local authorities of their roles in commissioning, the proposals will also reduce the incentives for Conservative and Labour councils to tackle weak and failing schools. All those councils see academies as vital to improving education in their areas. That is why I am right.

Helen Jones: Can my right hon. Friend tell the House what effect the proposals would have in constituencies such as mine? In Warrington only two schools are so far carrying out projects under BSF. William Beamont high school, which is in a deprived area of my constituency, was not put into the first wave by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. What will happen to such schools in the future?

Edward Balls: I know what my hon. Friend is talking about, because my area is in one of those waves. I know how much work has been done by schools in our areas to get ready for the BSF spending when it comes. We have reassured people that it will come. It has now been put under a substantial threat.
	In my hon. Friend's area, there are 12 schools and the proposals would mean that two would not be rebuilt. I can give her no assurances about which two schools those will be. Until the Conservative Front Benchers tell us, we will not know where the axe will fall. The threat will apply in 76 areas, represented by Labour, Conservative and Liberal MPs. It will mean an average 60 million cut in spending. I would like to reassure my hon. Friendbut other than recommending the election of a Labour Government, there is no reassurance that I can give her.

Barbara Keeley: Was my right hon. Friend as surprised as I was to hear the hon. Member for Surrey Heath say earlier that the best schools have old and tatty buildings? [Hon. Members: He didn't say that.] I wrote it down. I was responsible for education in Trafford, which is now Conservative Trafford again. That area had old and tatty buildings. Under the aspirations of the Conservative party, all the area can look forward to is to keeping its tatty old buildings.

Edward Balls: In too many of the areas involved, one in seven schools will still have old and tatty buildings if the Conservatives get their way. They will be postponing the investments that we are trying to put in place to refurbish or rebuild all secondary schools. As I have said, I would like to give my hon. Friend and other hon. Members more reassurance, but I am afraid that I cannot.

Andrew Gwynne: I represent a cross-border constituency, and the new schools being built in Tameside under building schools for the future are one of the developments of which I am most proud. In the case of the Stockport part of my constituency, I, like my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey), am outraged by the Conservative proposals. They would mean that Reddish Vale technology college in my constituency, which is crying out for a rebuild, will not see that work done. We do not need extra new schools. We need to rebuild the school that we have.

Edward Balls: I completely appreciate my hon. Friend's point.

Bill Wiggin: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Edward Balls: Conservative Members are being rather quiet, but I am happy to take this intervention. I point out to the hon. Gentleman that there are currently 22 schools in Shropshire and therefore that six of themand their 18,000 pupilswould not get the rebuilding or refurbishment that they are expecting. I advise him that new grammar schools in his constituency will not save him in that respect.

Bill Wiggin: I am grateful to the Secretary of State, but I must inform him that I represent part of Herefordshire, not Shropshire. When he has checked his notes, will he explain what is going on with the academy that has been proposed for my county? Why does Herefordshire get the third lowest funding per capita, and why do urban schools get almost twice as much as rural schools? Why is it so much cheaper to educate pupils in the countryside? We do not see why it should be.

Edward Balls: I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for misleading the House about the hon. Gentleman's constituency. I was badly advised about it. In fact, Herefordshire has only 14 secondary schools, which means that only four schools rather than six will not be rebuilt. Also, only 10,500 pupils in the county would find that they would not get the new school that they had been expecting.
	The Conservative proposal is a direct resurrection of the pupil passport proposed in the 2005 election manifesto. It would deliberately encourage the building of additional new schools with no regard to weak or underperforming schools. It is a sop to the right that will take school reform backwards and not forwards.
	Opposition is about more than just speeches and rhetoric: it is about policy, consistency and judgment. The latter is an attribute in which the hon. Member for Surrey Heath is rather weaker than he would like to believe. In the past three weeks, he has had three big calls to make. He has had to decide whether to back new diplomas and whether to support education to 18, and he has had to determine Conservative policy on academies and failing schools. In my judgment, he has put himself on the wrong side of the debate on each of those. He finds himself out of step with head teachers, parents, businesses, employers, universities and the interests of his own Back Benchers' constituents.
	The hon. Member for Surrey Heath does not back reform; instead, he opposes it. He does not support excellence for all, but excellence for the few. I know that he does not like me saying so, but that is the Tory policy. I shall give him some advice: his job is about more than just writing something witty and hoping that it will be read, smiled at and forgotten the next day. He needs to raise his game when it comes to substance. His best ideas are just thatideas. When he tries to put a new idea into practice, he has to perform a U-turn. It is his record on reform that is under threat, his credentials as a moderniser that are increasingly in doubt, and his judgment that is looking more suspect every day.
	Only one party in this country will deliver school reform and drive up standards for all. Only one party will invest in new schools for all, and deliver excellence for all, not just for some. It is time for the hon. Member for Surrey Heath to go back to the drawing board.

David Laws: This is an extremely timely debate, as Government policy on school reform, on public sector reform more generally and on the academies programmeespecially given the investigation by the delivery unitseems to be in flux.

Hilary Armstrong: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

David Laws: I will when I have had a chance to say more than one sentence.
	The debate is also extremely important because of the politics involved and because of what it tells us about the future direction of the Government's education policy. Moreover, it deals with one of the most important elements of the domestic agenda: that is, how we help children in the country's most deprived areas. For many yearssince long before 1997they have been failed successively by their local schools. Even with the improvements in GCSE results over recent years, 50 per cent. of youngsters in something like a third of all secondary schools do not achieve five A* to C GCSEs even across the whole range of subjects, leaving aside maths and English.

Hilary Armstrong: The hon. Gentleman says that Government policy is in flux, but I am sure that many Liberal councillors will be surprised by his amendment, which would see every school become an academy

David Laws: What?

Hilary Armstrong: Will the hon. Gentleman have words with his friends in Durham city, where the county council has opened up an opportunity for everyone within the law to bid for an academy? Even before the council has even seen who is interested in doing so, it is leading a no campaign. The council does not want an academy in the city, even though most people are convinced that that would improve the opportunities for hundreds of children in the area.

David Laws: That was long intervention, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I hope that there are some arrangements that will allow me more than an extra minute to make up for it. Our amendment contains no proposal to replace every school in the country with an academy, but many Liberal Democrat authoritiesSouthwark, for exampleembrace the academy programme. Academies have been set up in those areas, and it is probable that every secondary school in Southwark will become an academy.

Barry Sheerman: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

David Laws: In a moment. The challenge that has to be met has to do with that minority of schools that have high levels of deprivation and have underperformed for years. Earlier today, I visited one such school in west London that will be familiar to Front Benchers on both sides of the House. Only a decade or so ago, 95 per cent. of pupils at the Phoenix school were leaving without having achieved five good GCSE qualifications. Disorder was rife, and the school had many poor-quality supply teachers. They were teaching so badly that a great many were eventually sent home, with the result that multiple classes were taught in the school hall. Even so, that represented an improvement in the quality of teaching.
	To return to the point made by the right hon. Member for North-West Durham (Hilary Armstrong), I should point out that the Phoenix school is not an academy. It is a specialist school in the maintained sector, with a fantastic head teacher in William Atkinson. He has done a brilliant job in converting the school: if we had a few thousand like him to look after our failing schools, we would not need the academy programme and we would not be having this debate.

Angela Watkinson: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

David Laws: I want to make a bit more progress, and then I will give way to the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman).
	However, we do not have thousands of William Atkinsons. Therefore, 10 years ago the Government rightly sought to bring additional individuals and entities into the education system to try to improve the quality of school governance and leadership, which we know to be vital. The Government also committed themselves to improving the quality of school buildings, and in that they have succeeded brilliantly. Finally, they set out to allow schools to innovate, and it is the future of that programme that we are discussing today.
	I give way to the Chairman of the Select Committee.

Barry Sheerman: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but I believe that he is falling into the trap of thinking that one club will sort out all our problems with education.

David Laws: I am not.

Barry Sheerman: The hon. Gentleman said that we would not need academies if we could clone head teachers, but many other factors apart from leadership contribute to a school's success. Leadership is important, but relying on that alone is a dangerous trap.

David Laws: The hon. Gentleman has a great deal of experience in these matters, and he is right that other factors apart from school leadership are involved. However, getting the leadership right is the way to start getting all the other elements right, especially in failing schools. The academy programme has been useful in that it has brought into education better governance and more innovation. I am staggered that a Government who have supported that innovation should tell me in a parliamentary answer last month that, in respect of the freedoms enjoyed by academies they had
	no plans to extend these freedoms more widely.[ Official Report, 15 October 2007; Vol. 464, c. 890W.]
	I find that baffling, and will come back to the matter later.
	I want to return to the earlier questions from the hon. Member for Surrey, Heath (Michael Gove), who asked whether we were right to debate this matter today, and whether there really was any uncertainty about Government policy in this area. The Secretary of State invited us to believe that the hon. Gentleman was starting an entirely bogus debate, and that there are no grounds for believing that policy has shifted since he took over his post in the new Government.
	There is, however, quite a trail of evidence that the Secretary of State is approaching the issue differently. First, in his very important first statement to the House, he turned on its head what the previous Prime Minister had been saying about standards and structures. He went right back to saying that standards, rather than structures, were the focus, and when he said that, he knew very well that the Prime Minister's predecessor had said that he believed that structural reform was vital to getting standards right. So that was a deliberate signal, and some of the newspapers and some union leaders were briefed that there would be a change.
	The Government thenI have raised this issue before with the Secretary of Stateturned on its head a commitment in the last Labour party manifesto, which said that they wanted every school in the maintained sector to become independent. That is no longer the Government's position; that has been confirmed in a parliamentary written answer, despite what the Secretary of State has said. There we have a cast-iron and clear change in Government policy.

Edward Balls: I have made it absolutely clear that we have changed our policy on academies. We abolished the 2 million entry fee, to bring in more universities. We have required new academies to teach maths, science, English and IT under the national curriculum. I am bringing them into the mainstream, and I am also accelerating the academies programme. There is a clear difference between me and the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove): I think that having local authority support for academies is a good thing, which will help us to tackle underperformance across the country. Does the hon. Gentleman agree with what I am doing?

David Laws: I certainly think, as I implied earlier, that there is a strategic role for local authorities, but that is not what the Secretary of State is promoting. The academies programme is still run from the desk of Lord Adonis in Westminsterbizarre, as his work load is getting larger and largerand it will be impossible to manage 400 or 500 schools from there. Yes, there is a strategic role for local authorities, but the fear is that the Secretary of State is trying to have academies in name but not in substance. That is the issue about the role of local authorities.

David Chaytor: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

David Laws: I will give way in a second.
	I shall invite the Secretary of State in a second to respond to some specific points on that issue, but I ask him to understand that, when he deliberately overturns the previous Prime Minister's policy on structural reform, he cannot be surprised that people believe that something is going on; nor can he be surprised about that when he asks the delivery unit in No. 10 Downing street to consider the programme without being able to say why it is doing so.  [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am getting rather tired of Front-Bench interventions from a sedentary position; they do not help the debate, and I find them rather distracting.

David Laws: I am sure that you are quite right, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and one of the things that I learnt at the Phoenix school in west London this morning was the importance of leadership in maintaining good order, without which we learn nothing, and I should have thought that the Secretary of State recognised that observation.
	Let me raise with the Secretary of State some specific points about the Government's position on academies, given that it is obvious that he has been nudging away from structural reform and that he has been continuing the policy, which he and the then Chancellor had before the latter took over as the new Prime Minister, of being far more resistant and sceptical about public sector reform than the previous Prime Minister.
	The Secretary of State has not yet answered a number of important questions about the delivery unit report. In particular, can he let us know whether Lord Adonis was involved in the seminar on 1 November to establish the review? Can he tell us which academies will be reviewed by the delivery unit? I believe that five academies will be reviewed in particular.  [ Interruption. ] The Secretary of State from a sedentary position says, All of them. Is he really suggesting that the delivery unit will go around in a few weeks and look at 83 academies? Why does  The Times Educational Supplement say this week that the unit will look at five specific academies, including Knight's academy in London? If there is a shortlist of those that will be looked at, can we know about it?
	On the crucial issue of local authorities, I have been clear about my concern that the Government are getting the involvement of local authorities completely wrong in the academies programme. Ultimately, it seems nonsense that hundreds of schools in the maintained sector could have accountability that will bypass local authorities altogether and that there will be no strategic control. However, the Secretary of State appears to be trying to make it easier for some bodies to involve themselves in the academies programme. To the extent that that is bringing new structural reform and new people into the education system who are aspirational, particularly about schools that have large numbers of deprived pupils, that is very welcome, but we want to be sure that that does not actually involve a reverse takeover of the academies programme, so that the Secretary of State can say that he has got 400, 500 or 600 academies, when their power to innovate and to do things that they cannot do in the maintained sector is compromised.

Edward Balls: Could the hon. Gentleman give me one example of what he is talking about?

David Laws: I can give the Secretary of State a couple of examplesfirst, the changes that he has made already to some of the flexibilities that academies havebut can he answer some questions?

Edward Balls: rose

David Laws: The Secretary of State should hear the questions first. He has got some new local authority co-sponsors of academies. He mentioned seven of them in Manchester. Can he confirm in those cases where co-sponsorship occurs who exactly will choose the school leader? How many governors will they have? Who will determine whether there will be variations in the length of the school day, in aspects of the curriculum and in hiring teachers? Will that end up, by default, going back to local authority control? In that case, the involvement of local authorities would be precisely the opposite of what would make sense.

Edward Balls: I ask again: could the hon. Gentleman give me one example, where he has any evidence, of where the local authority's role with an academy is taking things backwards in terms of standards or the governors' ability to drive leadership and change?

David Laws: The Secretary of State has failed to answer the five or six questions that I have put to him. Those answers might give me the reassurance that I am looking for, and perhaps before the debate concludes, if he needs time to check some of the answers to those questions, he will be able to tell us whether some of my concerns are realfor example, in Manchester, where I understand that the local authority co-sponsors seven academies.
	I shall also suggest some other changes that should be made both to the academies programme and to some aspects of the Conservative policy that was laid out yesterday. I have sympathy with quite a lot of the Conservative motion, but I also have quite a large number of reservations, which caused us to table our amendment and prevent me from supporting the motion.
	I have already raised the first issue: who has strategic control? If either the Government or the Conservative party is remotely serious about all their warm words about localisation and devolving power, I hope that they will recognise and agree with the fact that it would be nonsense to maintain the academies programme when it includes 200, 300, 400 or 500 academies, run by one Minister from an office in Whitehall. Surely, when local authorities accept, as many of them now have, that they will be much more purchasers, rather than solely providers, of maintained school education, they should have a strategic role in ratcheting up standards and in managing some of the capital and admissions issues. Surely, that is completely different from what the Secretary of State is ending up with by default: a system run by a Minister, with local authority involvement coming at a lower level.

Andrew Gwynne: What the hon. Gentleman is suggesting is happening in local authorities now. There is best practice in Tameside in my constituency, where the local authority has set up the Tameside campus, where all the schoolswhether academies, comprehensive schools under the local education authority or foundation schoolsare in free association with one another, with the local authority as a key partner, to develop a range of education facilities across the borough. Is that not precisely what he is suggesting? And it is happening now in Labour-controlled Tameside.

David Laws: No, I am not sure that it is; I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman is agreeing with me and saying that he hopes that the Government will go in that direction or whether he is disagreeing with me. I think that it is nonsense to imagine that a programme of this scale in the future, with hundreds of schools and academies, could be accountable to a Minister in Westminster and Whitehall.
	The Government ought to be thinking about how local authorities can play a core, strategic role, without trying in any way to water down or compromise what is really important about the programme: getting new innovation, new governance and better leadership into those schools in the maintained sector that do not have it, while appreciating that, where they do, that is great. If there is a great school leadersuch as the gentleman who is running the Phoenix school, which I visited this morningthere is no need for an academy. He is doing many of the things that academies want to do. I would be happy to take him to any of the Government's academies, because they could all learn an awful lot from him. However, that is not necessarily the thrust of where we are going on Government policy.

Graham Stuart: Can the hon. Gentleman explain to the House how he sees local authorities having a core strategic role without their ultimately getting involved in the lower-level issues in schoolsif a school were failing, for instance? How would he stop a leaching of local authority influence into the everyday life of the school?

David Laws: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. By talking about failing schools, he highlights precisely the type of strategic role that local authorities should have. It would be totally unacceptable to rely in the future merely on an Ofsted report every three or four years, and a Secretary of State sitting in Whitehall and Westminster, to determine how such schools are doing. Sometimes the governing bodies of dysfunctional schools do not work either, so local authorities should have a role in setting standards and pouncing on schools that are failing, whether they are academies or local authority controlled schools. All those schools, in some way, run the risk; there is no guarantee that any school will have no problems at all in the future. The issue is about bringing in additional leadership.
	May I raise two other issues of concern, about Government policy andperhaps to a greater extentabout Conservative policy? I tried to tempt the hon. Member for Surrey Heath to resolve the issue of his party's approach to grammar schools, but I fear we are not much the wiser. I know that he is desperate to avoid getting entangled in this net, but if he aspires to be Secretary of State, he cannot avoid it for ever. If he were Secretary of State, he would have Conservative authorities, including Buckinghamshire, asking his permissionit is not just a matter for themto establish new grammar schools. Unless he is going to change the law and opt out completely, he cannot duck this issue for ever.
	I hope that the hon. Gentleman, and the Secretary of State, will accept that there is one way of moderating many of the concerns that people have had about the academies system in the pastand perhaps about the Conservative party in the past and in the future. People have been worried that academies will end up as a type of selective education and will improve their results not by doing better for their needy and deprived catchments, but by sucking in youngsters through different forms of selection. If the Secretary of State is having a serious review in the delivery unit, and if the Conservative party want to lance the boil of their selection policy, I invite them both to get rid of some of the totally unnecessary powers that academies still have to select by aptitude and potentially by banding. Those powers run the risk of allowing some academies to choose to improve their results by selecting pupils, rather than by improving standards. It would give great comfort to many on the progressive side of politics to know that academies will have to be judged on the real results they achieve for the catchments that they are there to serve.
	If academies and other maintained schools work well, it is possible that their intakes will be more balanced. When a school starts to do better, that is bound to pull back youngsters and parents who would previously have fled and would have done anything to avoid going thereas was surely the case with the Phoenix school before William Atkinson took over and turned the school round. Incidentally, he turned it round from a situation 10 years ago in which 5 per cent. of pupils got five passes at A* to C, to a situation over the past couple of years in which 70 per cent. achieved that. That is a staggering turnaround, which demonstrates to many of us the extent to which our communities can be failed by some schools. I hope that both Front-Bench teams will think about the issue of selection.

Angela Watkinson: The hon. Gentleman has strayed on to the subject of selection. May I ask him his view on a question that I would have liked to put to the Secretary of State? The Secretary of State's new adviser reportedly proposed that faith schools should no longer be allowed to admit pupils on the grounds of faith, because he considered that to be a form of academic selectionsomething that I absolutely deny. What is the hon. Gentleman's view?

David Laws: Many faith schools do a fantastic job and I certainly would not want to get rid of them. However, the hon. Lady will know that a lot of the research shows that some of the better results achieved by faith schools reflect the fact they have better and more aspirational intakes. I hope that, in the future, faith schools will take a more inclusive approach

Angela Watkinson: They do.

David Laws: Some do, as the hon. Lady says, but, frankly, some do not. Faiths that want to reach out to a wider communityas the faiths that I respect and admire want towill want youngsters coming into their schools who do not necessarily have the faith, or parents with the faith, that the school relates to.
	My last pointI know that a number of Members want to speak in the debateis about funding. The Government have done a fantastic amount on school funding over the past decade and deserve a lot of credit for the buildings programme that we have talked about. That is important, as people at the school that I visited this morning said. Having the right setting, aspirations and quality for youngsters who are not used to those things in their home environment sends out every right signal. However, the head teacher I met was the first to say thatas most of us would agreethe leadership in schools and the quality of staff are always more important than the buildings themselves. Those things should go together.
	Over the next few years, we are going to have a much more restrained school budget. The minimum funding guarantee for many schools will barely keep place with the rate of inflation and, in some cases, will be below it. So far, I am really disappointed in the Secretary of State when it comes to deprivation funding. He has not seized the opportunity to do something much more radical. I am talking about a system of the type that my party has suggested for a number of years and that the Conservative party is flirting with nowalthough I note that it has not allocated any extra funding to it, and it will not become a meaningful commitment until the Conservative party does that. I am talking about having a better system for funding deprived youngstersa system that does not target parts of the country, but tags people themselves, follows them through school, gives more money, predictably, to schools with the greatest deprivation, and also gives schools in the leafy catchment areas more of an incentive to take on some of those challenging youngsters.

Andrew Gwynne: The hon. Gentleman knows that we have had this discussion in previous education debates. My constituency covers part of Stockport. As a prosperous borough, it does not necessarily get the same funding as Tameside, even though the part of Stockport that I represent is more deprived than the part of Tameside I represent. Does he agree that the 1.3 million extra that Stockport got for deprivation out of the recent settlement was welcome and will he urge his Liberal Democrat colleagues on Stockport council to make sure that that money reaches the deprived parts of the borough such as Reddish in my constituency and Brinnington and Offerton in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey).

David Laws: I am sure that my colleagues there will do an excellent job, but I cannot welcome the additional money with as much enthusiasm as the hon. Gentleman. The figure is 40 million, which is peanuts. The amount that my party has been talking aboutbetween 1.5 billion and 2.5 billionwould take the 10 or 15 per cent. that constitutes the most deprived youngsters, on free school meals, up to the private school level of funding now. That would be a far more sensible way of funding schools than the Prime Minister's rather daft and meaningless commitment to raise the level of maintained school funding in the future to the private school levelbut the private school level in 2005. That target is not likely to be met until after 2020. I would have hoped that the Secretary of Statewho has been so concerned about issues of child poverty and the lack of social mobility, during his involvement in politics and before he came to the Housewould take the opportunity of a growing cross-party consensus to do something much bolder on this issue.

Graham Stuart: I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman could join a growing cross-party consensus that, when pupils, particularly from deprived areas such as Bransholme in Hull, cross over into a neighbouring education authority such as East Riding, they should bring with them the additional funding that has rightly be allocated to them. They should not go to one school, a mere half a mile away, and have 500 a year less spent on them, when they need that support.

David Laws: The hon. Gentleman is quite right and we would want to see the funding follow the pupil. However, I urge him to lobby his Front-Bench team, rather than me, on the issue. The Conservative party's proposals on the pupil premium or advantage premium are pretty woolly and vague, and they are not funded. Until they become both clear and funded, they will not mean very much.
	This has been an interesting debate so far and I hope that it will continue to be so. I hope that, over the next couple of weeks, the Secretary of State will take the opportunity to clarify, seriously, the Government's policy on this particular programme. I believe he is to make a speech next week on academies and specialist schools. I hope that he will not leave it until the report of the delivery unit to be really clear about the Government's philosophy in this area. He needs to get over and to swallow any of the traditional concerns he has about the reform programme. If he fails to do that, it will have serious impacts on the credibility of the Government's public service reform programme, and on the domestic agenda. Far more importantly, it will mean that in future there will be many more schools that fail their many deprived pupilswe are all aware of that type of schoolnot for one year or two, but for generations.

Barry Sheerman: In my few remarks, I will try to strike a balance. The last time we discussed education in the House was on the Queen's Speech. I was rather disappointed by the tone of the Opposition's amendment, because it fell into the trap that we associate with the rather right-wing think-tanks, such as Politeia. The attitude was that state education was awful and every school was failing. That message does not square with my experience. I am one of those Members of Parliament who visit many schools, most of which are good. They are full of energy and have good leadership, excellent staff and a learning environment. The students seem to be happy. Interestingly, a recent report from the Keele centre of excellence in schools showed that to be the case in many schools.
	Not all schools and teachers are perfect, but to go to the other extreme and to make the reductionist argument that almost everything in British education is bad demoralises teachers, heads and parents.

Michael Gove: rose

Barry Sheerman: No, I will not give way to the Opposition Front Bencher; he is almost universally rude when people give way to him. I will give way to Back Benchers. Front Benchers have had enough time to speak.

Graham Stuart: In that case, will the hon. Gentleman give way to me?

Barry Sheerman: I will indeed.

Graham Stuart: As a new member of the hon. Gentleman's Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families, I am extremely grateful. I just re-read the motion, because I did not recognise his description of it. There is nothing negative in the motion. It merely expresses a desire that the Government do not resile from the academies programme, but take it forward for the betterment of pupils.

Barry Sheerman: My hon. Friend is a welcome new member of our Committee, but if he looks back at my remarks he will see that I was talking about the last education debate. For me, today's debate is much betterit is about academies. That was just a warning shot. I do not like it when we say that everything is bad and is going to hell in a handcart. It is not.
	We on the Select Committee have always tried, even when the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) was a member, to judge the Government by certain standards, one of which is evidence-based policy. Opposition parties should be judged on evidence-based policy, too. When it comes to the evidence-based policy for the recent foray into early years education, I am critical of those on my Front Bench and the Opposition Front Bench, who are both getting it wrong because of their passionate love affair with synthetic phonics. The Select Committee inquiry found that any systematic way of teaching children to read worked.
	The problem was a lack of any system in too many schools. Indeed, when we went further, we found that the real trouble was that teachers were not taught to teach children to read. We made two strong recommendations. First, we said that we should ensure that teachers are trained to teach whatever system they choose, or whatever is in fashionand it is very much a question of fashion. Secondly, we said that we should be very careful when extrapolating from the evidence of one piece of research in one part of the United KingdomClackmannanshire. In a sense, I am disappointed with both the Government and the Opposition.

Nick Gibb: rose

Barry Sheerman: No, I will not give way to Front Benchers. I said that I would not.

Jim Knight: The hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb) is quite polite.

Barry Sheerman: He is very polite, but I will not give way to him. As Chairman of the Select Committee, I criticise both Government and Opposition Front Benchers.

Angela Watkinson: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Barry Sheerman: In a minute; let me develop my argument.
	Opposition Front Benchers say that a dramatic change is occurring in the Government's attitude to academies. So far, I have not seen that, and I spend a lot of time talking to the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, many of the major sponsors and academies themselves. I try to keep my finger on the pulse of what is happening in academies. I do not see, and they do not seem to perceive, a radical change in the academy programme, or restrictions being put on them. The suggestion is that heavy emphasis is being put back on the dead-weight hand of local authorities. After years as Chair of the Select Committee on Children[Hon. Members: Schools and Families.]Schools and Families; sorry, someone was passing me something. With my experience as Chair of the Committee, I do not see academies being put at risk by local government.
	However, there is a problem. Time and again, in every inquiry we undertook, parents, head teachers and people in the education sector and in schools said, Give us a good, supportive, well-informed, local authority in partnership with us; that is our best option. That is what they crave, and even those places that do not have that relationship would like it. In a sense, getting that balance right is one of the responsibilities of any Government.
	We cannot deny local democracy, although it is sometimes awkward. Councillors make decisions that others do not like. When the Liberal Democrats were in charge of Kirklees, they set their face against academies. I was quietly talking about the possibility of an academy or two in Kirklees and Huddersfield, but I could not get anywhere when the Liberal Democrats were in charge. Two councillors changed in the local elections, and we now have a Conservative-led administration that is in favour of academies, and I support that. Local democracy is like that, and we have to live with it. Sometimes, local authorities are so bad on education and delivery that pretty dramatic action has to be taken. I can name cases in Yorkshire and across the country where such dramatic action was necessary, and education in those areas is much better for it.
	There is an unfair, biased balloting system for grammar schools, so why not have a fair balloting system when a local authority says that it does not want an academy, but local people might do so? We have told the Government that it would be good if we had a fair balloting system for selective schools instead of the present rules, under which any proposal for change is defeated. A balloting system might not be bad; I just put that idea in the ears of the Minister for Schools and Learners. It could apply to schools that want to become academies and schools that want not to be grammar schools. It would be a more even-handed approach, but I am not sure how quickly he will grasp it.
	I want to say something supportive about academies. Evidence given to our Committee suggests that academies have shown steady improvement, but there will be some challenges. I was interested to hear the caution of the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws), on banding. In our inquiries on admissions, head teacher after head teacher said, If we had a school intake that represented our community, we could do wonderful things, but what happens if everyone who can do so moves to a better catchment area, or puts their children into independent education?
	I visited a secondary modern school in Kent where 100 per cent. of the pupils received free school meals, 65 per cent. had special educational needs and there were many looked-after children. With such an imbalance, it is extremely difficult to do a good job for all the children, no matter how charismatic the head. Of course, if children go to a selective school in Kent, they will do well and get a good education, but the majority of pupils who do not get into the grammar schools get a poor education, so on average all children in Kent get a sub-standard education. That is an interesting effect of selection.
	The hon. Member for Yeovil responded to an intervention about faith schools. The Committee found that one problem with faith schools was that they did not tend to reflect their community. Ironically, according to their charters, many of our greatest public schoolsset up many years ago by kings, queens and notable politicians, if one is prepared to dig back that farwere established for the education of poor children. They are hardly in that business now.

Stephen Williams: Does the Chairman of the Select Committee welcome the trend of independent schools joining the state family of schools by becoming academies, as Colston school in my constituency and Bristol Cathedral school are doing?

Barry Sheerman: Indeed, I welcome that, and I welcome choice.
	It is odd for me as a ChristianI am a poor Christian, although I was the parliamentary church warden of St. Margaret's, Westminster for seven yearsto see schools deliberately, or perhaps subliminally, exclude poor students from faith schools. Often, those are Anglican schools and Roman Catholic schools. One looks at the surrounding community and wonders why the poorer kidsthose on free school mealsdo not get a fair crack at getting into those schools. There is evidence of a kind of selectionnot by entrance examinationbecause something is going on when the community is not reflected in a school's membership.

Angela Watkinson: The hon. Gentleman can scratch away as deeply as he likes, but the faith schools in my constituency all have a genuinely comprehensive intake. A Roman Catholic secondary girls school, of which I am a governor, has a genuinely comprehensive intake and its fair share of statemented children and children with disabilities. It has high standards of discipline and behaviour and high parental interest in the education of their children. It takes pupils from a neighbouring, notably more deprived parish, and the children from the more deprived area are often the highest achievers. It is the ethos of the school that is so successful.

Barry Sheerman: I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. Going back to evidence-based policy, we looked closely at admissions. I am not saying anything about the school with which she is involved, but there was a general problem with faith schools. I hope very much that the new admissions code and the provision that enables it to be delivered more powerfully and positively will show results. The Select Committee's recommendations on the mandatory code, the ability to enforce it through the schools adjudicator and the role for the schools commissioner might make a real difference.
	Academies present a challenge. If a bright, new academy, with new staff and new leadership, is created where a school has not performed well, a broader group in the community will support it. That is what we all want. People who were commuting from the old school area will attend the academy. Some critics, especially those on the left of the Labour party, will look at the statistics and say that the academy has been taken over by the middle classes, but that is not necessarily true. What we are seeing is a healthy influence.

David Laws: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Barry Sheerman: I have very little time left.
	Academies are doing the job that they were set up to do, but they are criticised when their intake broadens. Where that does not happen, I have always been a strong defender of banding. If we get a fair proportion of the surrounding community into the academy, great things can be done in education.
	Where there are challenges in a schoolfor example, large staff turnover because of its inner-city location and a high turnover of studentsit is all too easy to dismiss the efforts of a team that is working hard to deal with them. Such a school is often in danger of falling into the special category, and have Ofsted breathing down its neck. If its intake changes even a little during the year, the head teacher can become unemployable simply because the Ofsted inspection took place that year, rather than the year before.
	I have much sympathy for schools in the inner cities and inner towns. The Government have tried to help them with their challenges, but they can end up feeling that they have not had a fair shake of the dice.
	There is and always will be a problem with our education system. This morning the Committee discussed absence in the early years. In many schools, that starts at 2 per cent. and can reach 11.5 per cent. among pupils of 14, 15 and 16. We need to conduct more research into those not in education, employment or trainingNEETsand tracking the early signs.
	The debate is interesting and has been more constructive than the first two education debates in this Session. I hope that we will go back to the guiding principle of evidence-based policy.

Mark Harper: I found it extraordinary that the Secretary of State devoted such a large part of his speech to talking about usthe Conservative party and our policies. I should have thought that, particularly in view of the breadth of the Government amendment to the motion, the debate was an opportunity to set out the Government's policy and to explain what they are doing for education. Most of the Secretary of State's remarks seemed to be aimed rather more at us. Perhaps his obsession with my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), the shadow Secretary of State, indicates who the Secretary of State thinks is likely to be taking his job in the relatively near future.
	In my constituency we have an excellent Conservative-controlled local education authority, but as in the case of one or two other Members who have spoken, it is a member of the F40 group of the most poorly funded LEAs in the countrya problem that Labour promised to fix when it came into government 10 years ago. The gap between my constituents in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire and better funded LEAs has not narrowed significantly in the intervening period. That gives my local authority significant challenges in continuing to deliver excellent education.
	I am pleased to speak in support of the motion because even in a county such as Gloucestershire, which delivers good results, it is still important to have parental choice and competition to keep everyone on their toes. In a constituency such as mine, which has more than 50 primary and secondary schools, that is important.
	The exchanges between Labour and Conservative Front Benchers about the surplus places rule were interesting. In one way, I was heartened that the Minister for Schools and Learners confirmed that there is such a rule, as the Government often pretend that there is not. I want to take a moment to explain one of the impacts in a constituency such as mine. It has a number of very good primary schools, many of which are full. Some are not physically full, but full only in terms of the indicated admission number.
	Even in an excellent Conservative-controlled authority, local authority bureaucrats like to take control and manage parental choices. I was involved in helping Pauntley schoolan excellent school, in the north of my constituency, that is highly regarded by parents; many more parents want their children to go there. We have had an extraordinary battle in trying to secure extra funding, which I am pleased to say my county council colleagues have approved, to expand the school and replace some temporary classrooms with more fitting buildings so that it can continue to serve the local community.
	Local authority bureaucrats have amazing systems of dividing up the world into polygons and deciding that people have to send their children to school according to exactly where they live. Such systems are completely oblivious to parental choice and considerations such as where the parents may need to travel to work, the nature of the child and whether the particular school fits the particular child's requirements.

Anne Main: I listened with interest to what the Secretary of State said about funding and choice. In my constituency, many parents are concerned about special educational needs. As a result, they wanted to set up a new school that dealt specifically with autism. Such a school was set up in Stevenage and was visited by the hon. Member for Stevenage (Barbara Follett). However, the parents struggle with getting the funding out of the system; that funding is not recognised in respect of choice because they have set up their own school for special educational needs.
	As my hon. Friend says, it is important that there be choice in the system and that special educational needs are not overlooked. Children with such needs should not be shoehorned into going to mainstream schools, where they are not always comfortable; their parents are not always comfortable at their being there either.

Mark Harper: I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. She knows that I have taken considerable interest in special educational needs; indeed, they were the subject of my maiden speech in the House.
	The issue of admissions and the improvement of the system's capacity is one of the reasons why I so welcome our attempt to improve the number of good school places available across the country. One of the problems that parents often have, and on which they often seek my support, is when an excellent school's indicated admission number does not reflect physical capacity, but has been set, perhaps, at a time when people did not appreciate its importance. Such parents' children are turned away from their choice of school. Having spoken to the head teacher, visited the school and considered its ethos and teaching methods, those parents feel that it best reflects the needs of their child, and they are turned away. They are always advised to send their children to a school that is failing to attract parents, so that the books can be balanced and the surplus places rule dealt with. That simply puts the needs of children behind the bureaucrats' need to tidy up the numbers and meet the surplus places rule.
	Indeed, the language in this debateeven talking about the concept of surplus placesshows, frankly, that the allocation process is still very much a socialist top-down planning system. We do not talk about having surplus places in other services or businesses; we expect to have a range of choices and to be able to choose where we want to go. Businesses are able to deal with increased demand and provide the extra capacity. If we had more of that in the education system, that would drive up standards and give parents more choices.

Graham Stuart: Does my hon. Friend agree that the critical element of the improved system that he is discussing is the ability for new schools to start up? If they cannot, the better schools will be monopolised by the middle classes and those who are excluded will find themselves forced into schools that are not forced to change, because of the fact that pupils are forced to attend them.

Mark Harper: That is a good point.
	As I made my previous remarks, I saw the Minister gesturing in a motion that I presumed indicated that he was referring to funding. I am happy to deal with that issue. In my constituency, we have had a school that was not successful at attracting local parents. As a result, the number of its pupils fell below the level at which the school was financially viable. I was perfectly happy and comfortable about defending the decision to close that school. If a school is unable to demonstrate to local parents that it can deliver successful results, and is unable to attract them, it should close.

Jim Knight: indicated dissent.

Mark Harper: The Minister is pulling faces, but I had that conversation and it was not particularly controversial locally. I explained to the school that if it was unable to persuade local parents to choose it over others, it was a bit difficult to force the local authority to continue funding it.
	I have a problem when local authorities are forced to close, or are pressed towards closing, good, well-subscribed schools because of funding pressures. That is difficult. As the Secretary of State said, in some ways it is better to allow parents to choose which schools their children go to, even if the schools then expand to take on the pupils. That would highlight failing schools that are not delivering the quality of education that all our children need; it would force something to happen. Preventing parents from getting their first choice, and forcing them to send their children to a school that they do not want, just props up schools that are not delivering and delays the steps that need to be taken to deliver proper educationnot only for the area generally, but for the pupils in the school that is not doing as well as it should.
	I am pleased with the remarks made about increasing capacity. I would be pleased if schools were able to expand up to their physical capacity and good schools were able to expand still further. That is certainly not what happens locally. The indicated admission number does not always correspond with the physical capacity of the school, and once that number is hit, the school cannot take in any more pupils, regardless of whether the school has the physical capacity.  [Interruption.] If the Minister is saying something different, that is incredibly encouraging and I shall pass the news to my local education authority. However, I fear that that will not be the case.
	I also want to address the issue of social mobility and raising aspirations. I know that the Minister has views on that, and a number of the speeches have referred to it. As the Minister knows, a while ago the right hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn) said that social mobility had not improved and was going backwards. The right hon. Gentleman said that, because of our systems at the moment, someone from his background would be unlikely today to achieve the position that he reached in becoming a member of the Cabinet. The Minister will also know, although it is not now his Department's responsibility, that not enough socially disadvantaged young people are able to go to university. In my view, that is largely not the fault of the admissions systemalthough there may be individual casesbut due to the fact that those children are not given a good enough primary and secondary education and that in many cases their aspirations are simply not high enough.
	When making one of our regular visits to schools in our constituencies, particularly those in the more disadvantaged areas, all hon. Members try to broaden the children's horizons as we talk to them, to raise aspirations and to support the heads and teachers when they try to do likewise. I encourage schools in my constituency to visit this House when possible although it is a little difficult because of the distancebecause that is a good opportunity for the children to experience some British history as they walk around the parliamentary estate and to watch a debate and, one hopes, a good parliamentary occasion. That may enable some children not necessarily to think of a political future but to broaden their horizons and think of opportunities that they may not have previously chosen.
	In a ministerial statement just nine days ago, the Minister for Schools and Learners said:
	Narrowing the attainment gap for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds is one of the strategic objectives of my Department and is a key priority for the Government.[ Official Report, 12 November 2007; Vol. 467, c. 29WS.]
	The Government have been in power for 10 years, and it is a tragedy that that gap is still so wide and that progress has not moved further and faster.
	Finally, I want to say a few words about the paper that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath launched yesterday. I particularly welcome the proposals on improving good school places in the state system to shift the balance of power away from the establishment and in favour of parents. That is the single biggest change that we could make, and over the long term it would make a decisive shift in the education system for the good of all pupils, particularly those from more disadvantaged backgrounds.

Andrew Slaughter: I am somewhat relieved that the Chairman of the Children, Schools and Families Committee has left. I have now been a member of his Committee for one week. I feel that my comments may not match the standard of bipartisanship that he was urging on us, but I will do my best.
	We must take Opposition day motions as we find them, but I was astonished when I read this one. It could have been a lot shorter; indeed, it could have been one sentence: I wish we'd thought of that. It was rather quaint to listen to the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) begin by saying that the Government lacked vision, and then going on to make the most policy-light speech that I have had the misfortune to hear in my relatively short time here. The reason for that lies partly in the fact that the ideas are borrowed. I have it on good authority that when the Conservative policy review body sat down to try to think through those ideas, this was all that they could come up with at the end of a two-hour session with the great and the good. There was nothing that they could do to better the academy programme.

Nick Gibb: I realise that the hon. Gentleman is new to the Select Committee, but he will of course be aware that the academy programme builds on and almost replicates the city technology college concept, which was introduced by the last Conservative Government.

Andrew Slaughter: Having run an LEA for 20 years, I am certainly not new to Conservative education policy. I take it as flattery that the Conservatives wish to borrow the policy and try to claim it as their own.
	The Government's amendment sets out their achievements in education. I welcome those achievements in three respects. First, I welcome the proposals in the Gracious Speech, with the education and skills Bill, which will extend education and training further to 17 and 18-year-olds, and the Children and Young Persons Bill, which will take steps to address the disadvantaged position of children in care. I thought, perhaps naively, that those proposals would be relatively uncontroversial, and I, like my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), was dismayed to hear how Opposition Members approached them in the debate on the Gracious Speech, in trying to find fault with wholly praiseworthy measures.
	Secondly, I praise the investment that the Government have put in. Yesterday I visited Burlington Danes academy in my constituency, where in addition to the 2 million put in by sponsors, 16 million is being put in by the Government to build new parts of the school to an extremely high standard and to give that school, which has gone through some troubled times but is basically excellent, a bright future. Earlier this year I attended the opening of Acton high school, which has been completely rebuilt to an astonishingly high standard. As soon as one walks into such a school, one can see the value that is placed on young people and their education, which I never saw in the dirty, unkempt and distressed schools that I visited when the Conservative party was in government.
	I also praise initiatives such as building schools for the future, which will give more than 100 million to schools in my constituency, Sure Start and neighbourhood renewal. I think that the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) mentioned Phoenix high school, which is in my constituency, and William Atkinson six times. I am not surprised, because William, who is the head teacher of Phoenix, is a most inspiring individual. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman visited the schoolalthough next time he might want to give me notice that he is going there.

David Laws: I apologise to the hon. Gentleman, who has reminded me that I should have written to him beforehand.

Andrew Slaughter: Civility is prized and taught at Phoenix, and I am sure that, having been there, the hon. Gentleman will follow that example.
	The neighbourhood renewal fund gave several million pounds to support the families of pupils at Phoenix, and William would say that that is one of the main reasons why that school, which has an intake from one of the most deprived areas in the country, has come on by leaps and bounds.
	Thirdly, I praise the Government on results. I could go through every school attended by children from my constituency, but I will mention just three. William Morris sixth form, of which I have been a governor since it was set up in 1994, has had an outstanding Ofsted report. I was told that if one types outstanding sixth form into Google, William Morris comes up on the first page. Phoenix is the most improved school in England over the past three years. Hurlingham and Chelsea school, having been in special measures three years ago, came out of special measures in record time, and its A to C GCSE results increased two and a half times over that period under the utterly inspiring leadership of Phil Cross, who is the new William Atkinson of the borough.
	I mention those three schools because they were all, at different times, targeted for closure by the Conservatives: William Morris was targeted in the last three years of the Conservative Government; Phoenix, which was for many years rubbished by Conservative councillors, who said that if they came to power they would close it; and Hurlingham and Chelsea, which, now that the Conservatives are in power locally, they are seeking to close. It may seem parochial to talk about one of my own LEAs, but there are lessons to be learned from looking at the Conservatives in local government, and how they deal with education, that give the lie to what they say when they talk in this House about education policy nationally.
	The history of education policy over the brief 18 months since the LEA and the council changed hands in Hammersmith and Fulham is an extraordinary and disgraceful one, which may interest my hon. Friends on the Front Bench, if nobody else. The first move was an attempt to close Hurlingham and Chelsea school, which, as I said, came out of special measures in record time and is fast improving. At the end of a seven-month campaign by the school to avoid closure, the closure proposal was withdrawn, but only because it was clear to the LEA that the school adjudicator was not going to find in its favour.
	I always appreciate new administrations learning by their mistakes, but in this case it was quite the contrary. Since then, over the past six months, a commission has been set up under the chairmanship of Baroness Perry. I have nothing but respect for her professional record, but it is unfortunate that she was at the same time chairing the Conservative party's policy review. Her report was highly critical of the LEA and its poor relations with schools, and called for a full review of 14-to-19 education; both those facts have been ignored. It also put forward two quite extraordinary proposals, which are leading to the misuse of building schools for the future money in the LEA, and to an attempt to use the academy process to introduce selection by the back doora topic that the hon. Member for Yeovil alluded to in his speech. Such misuse of the academy programme is a danger. It will not be misused if Lord Adonis has his way, but it will be if my local Tory LEA has its way.
	What were the two proposals? The first is known locally as the French connection. It is the proposal to sell off two propitious school sites to the French Government. That came out through Freedom of Information Act inquiries and investigations by the head teachers of the schools concerned. A proposal to sell off two of the best sites in Fulham to the French Government for conversion to private lyce schools was being made without the knowledge of the schools. I have a letter here from the chairman of governors of one of the schools, who says that in June he found some French people wandering uninvited around his school, asking people at random questions about the curriculum. I have asked for a meeting with the French ambassador to discuss these matters, but the fact remains that neither that school nor Hurlingham and Chelsea school, which is being asked to share its site with a private lyce, was consulted in any way. Hurlingham and Chelsea now faces its second battle in a year to remain open, despite its outstanding achievements.
	The second proposal being pursued by my Tory LEA is to close the only secular girls school in the borough, which is the first school of choice for many Muslim families in my constituency. It is a very good and well-respected school, but it is to close, and then share a very small site with a boys school in Fulham. Lest it be thought that I am simply making party political points

Graham Stuart: No one would think that.

Andrew Slaughter: Well, they are party political points, but that is because I have a terrible Tory council. There is nothing I can do about that. My electorate can do something in a few years' time, but there is nothing I can do at the moment.
	The principal's report at our local sixth form college talks about the 14-to-19 strategy in the borough:
	Little, if any, progress was made on this in the borough during 2006-7 because of the council's ill-thought out attempt to close Hurlingham and Chelsea School and the ensuring planning blight whilst the school fought a seven month campaign to stay open. This resulted in a serious lack of trust between the council members and officers and secondary headteachers...With vital deadlines for the borough's BSF submission now imminent, there is a greater sense of purpose this year...However, there is further uncertainty resulting from the commission's recommendations, particularly the one to set up a new school on the Henry Compton site to include Fulham Cross Girls' School. Staff, governors and parents of FCGS are deeply unhappy at what they regard as a threat to girls' education, and may well mount a campaign to save the school.
	That is an understatement. The report continues:
	In my view, we do not currently have the necessary collaboration or expertise in Hammersmith and Fulham to benefit fully from the opportunity BSF brings to create exciting and innovative schools for the future. Headteachers have urged the Director to use some of the funding to enable us to gain some additional external expertise.
	Another head in the borough put it rather more succinctly:
	we all have concerns about the London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham at both Council and Officer level...I hope that something can be done to rescue education for young people in this Borough.
	An unprecedented five head teachers and principals, all affected by these lunatic changes, have asked for an appointment to see my hon. Friend the Minister for Schools and Learners. I hope that he will agree to thatI am sure that he willbecause the situation is at crisis point.

Angela Watkinson: The hon. Gentleman is painting a picture of vexatious school closures by his local education authority. Most school closures are prompted by Government policywhen there is 10 per cent. spare capacity throughout the boroughand LEAs are in the very difficult position of having to reduce that spare capacity. No such proposals will be accepted or welcomed by teachers or pupils. Is the hon. Gentleman saying that those proposals have nothing at all to do with there being more than 10 per cent. spare capacity in the LEA in Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush?

Andrew Slaughter: I can answer that very straightforwardly. At the same time as the LEA is proposing those closures, it is proposing to open a new academy in my constituency. I know about that only through hearsay, because neither local residents nor the heads have been consulted. For example, the head of the other academy that is less than a mile away, whom I was talking to yesterday, has not been consulted. I have not been consulted. A feasibility study has gone on; it is another fait accompli. I welcome the proposal to open a new school in the borough, but it sits ill in the mouths of people who are trying to close existing good schools. In the moment or two that I have left, I shall talk about why that is happening.

Angela Watkinson: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Andrew Slaughter: No, I will not give way again.
	Why is that happening? The answer is straightforward. Building schools for the future money is being used to move two schools to a single site, so as to free up a site to be disposed of as a private lyce. It is being misused in order to pillory and limit the chances and opportunities for young people in community schools in my borough.

Angela Watkinson: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Andrew Slaughter: I will not give way.
	At the same time, if the LEA gets its wayI shall be talking about this matter in more detail to Lord Adonisthe academy programme will be used to introduce selection in the borough. The scheme is for a selective school in the south, partly sharing its site with a private school, and an academy that takes the best children from the Phoenix and from the existing academy in my constituency, in the north of the borough. It is trying to set up what I might call a poor man's grammar school service.
	When we come down to it, that is why the hon. Member for Surrey Heath cannot answer the questions about grammar schools and selection. They know that they cannot say it publicly, but almost every Member on the Opposition Benches wants a return to full selection and grammar streaming. That is what, by fair means or foul, is happening. I will not allow it to happen in the LEAs in my constituency. With the help of my hon. Friend the Minister and Lord Adonis, I hope that none of these things will come to pass for the new academy, which I welcome, or for the existing schools, which are performing under the most extreme duress, and the draconian policies of the LEA. I hope that they continue to thrive, although that will be despite the LEA, rather than with the benefit of its support.

Brooks Newmark: The Opposition motion expresses the clear commitment in my party to continuing reform of our schools system, to the encouragement of devolved responsibility in schools and to the provision of greater support to the disadvantaged through greater choice and openness. It is, moreover, a clear commitment that we have in the past honoured in the Lobby by supporting the Government when we believed that they were introducing necessary reforms. Our crucial support for the Education and Inspections Act 2006 proves that we, at least, have the courage of our convictions when it comes to schools reform. But while we were busy reaching for consensus in the Lobby, many in the Labour party were reaching for consensus on paper, and were still not finding it.
	It is perhaps unfortunate that next to the Government amendment, some rather more ominous names appear alongside the name of the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families. First, there is the Prime Minister, who does not seem to know whether he is coming or going on reform. Secondly, we have the Chancellor, who in all probability, will soon be going. Thirdly, there is the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, who, before his second coming, was busy with an alternative, but sadly not very innovative education White Paper, while on the Back Benches. Last but not least, we have the Secretary of State for Health, who is presumably listed for showing his dedication through taking a hospital pass from the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families when he got himself into a spot of bother in last Tuesday's debate. When we analyse the Government's policy on schools reform, it appears that only one principle is at workrandom movement, otherwise dubbed as Brownian motion.
	I want to focus on one narrow aspect of our motion: the necessity of helping the most disadvantaged with all the resources available to us. It can sometimes be too easy to view disadvantage in a narrow, socio-economic sense. That is the root of a great deal of, but by no means all, disadvantage. Pupils with special educational needs are still some of the most disadvantaged in our schools, as hon. Members from different parties have pointed out.
	The Secretary of State was rightly lauded by hon. Members of all parties for his commitment while on the Back Benches to greater support for special needs education and disabled young people. He managed to maintain that commitment when he was Economic Secretary to the Treasury, although he sometimes had to give his support at arm's length. However, something about the new regime appears to spoil those good intentions.
	I was disappointed that the Secretary of State could not use his customary leverage with the Prime Minister to get a commitment on SEN into the Queen's Speech. It was also unfortunate that, during last Tuesday's debate, he preferred the attractions of baiting on Surrey Heath to setting out the Government's agenda on education. I have a strong and personal interest in children with SEN getting a better start in life and I do my best to keep abreast of the Government's stance on those issues. However, that stance is beginning to look shaky. The comprehensive spending review in October announced the availability of an extra 340 million over the CSR period to support disabled children and young people, but the way in which the additional funding will interact with existing provision for SEN remains unclear.
	I am sceptical of the utility of additional funding without a root-and-branch review that places children's needs first and foremost. Such a review is now getting started under my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (John Bercow). Once again, the Conservative party is setting the reform agenda. However, if reform is to be effective, an SEN system must be founded on genuine parental choice. Just as choice should be the decisive factor in driving up standards in the wider school system, so it should be decisive in approving the outcomes for children with special needs.
	Meanwhile, the Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families was forced to publish yet another report on SEN last month. The reason for the repetition is simply the Government's intransigence. I am not a member of the Committee, but I hope that I shall never miss an opportunity to pay tribute to its work. Sir Robert Balchin, the chair of the Conservative party's commission on special needs education, has also produced a fine report, which I recommend to the Secretary of State. Those are only two in a growing chorus of voices that call for a fundamental reform of SEN provision.
	Last year's Select Committee report recommendedto my mind, unequivocallybreaking the link between assessment and funding of SEN provision. The Government have misinterpreted that, though I do not claim that they did so wilfully. However, the response to the report was generally viewed as leaving a lot to be desired. I hope that, when the Minister for Schools and Learners responds, he will commit to giving the Committee's latest report on the matter the attention that it deserves. I hope that he will also commit to providing a national strategy for SEN, which allows schools the freedom to tailor their provision to the needs of the communities that they serve.
	Although our motion calls for greater freedom for schools and an innovative approach to helping the most disadvantaged young people, the Government continue to equate choice with elitism. The Secretary of State parroted that equation last Tuesday, and he did so again today, when he wrongly stated that we support the few and not the many. Nevertheless, SEN provision remains, all too often, both stretched and inflexible for parents and children.
	The Government's amendment ends by reiterating the planned extension of education and training to 18. I foresee a problem in that the Government propose to compel a new cohort of 16 to 18-year-olds to remain in a system that already struggles to cope. The Government should act now to prepare the system of SEN provision to handle a great deal more strain if their proposals to raise the school leaving age are to go ahead.
	In a parliamentary answer, the Government estimated additional costs of 90 million to support those with SEN through extending compulsory schooling to 18. How was that figure calculated? How robust does the Secretary of State believe it to be? Not only extra money but extra staff and resources are needed. Better still, fundamental reform of provision is needed. A significant gap remains between the perception of SEN provision in Whitehall and the experience of parents on the ground. I do not want that gap to widen further because the Government have announced a policy on compulsory education to grab the headlines without doing their homework on special needs.
	We need to raise the bar and close the gap. The days of one-size-fits-all education should have ended long ago. Unfortunately, they have not. In so many other aspects of education policy, we are setting the pace of change. It must begin with legitimate choice for parents.

Angela Watkinson: Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating the ROSErealistic opportunities for supported employmentproject at Havering college of further and higher education? It is specifically designed to ease students with special needs into employment. They have a job tutor who sees them through the first few weekssometimes months, depending on the student's abilityuntil they are able to attend a workplace independently. That example of good practice could be followed throughout the country.

Brooks Newmark: I certainly join my hon. Friend in congratulating that project. Other colleges, such as Edith Borthwick in my constituency, do exactly the same, and I congratulate them on their hard work in supporting their students to move on and get ready to play a productive role in society and the workplace.
	Just as SEN provision must be at the heart of our schools and academies, choice must be at the heart of SEN provision, not an inconvenient accessory to it.

David Chaytor: In my constituency, I have a school that is similar to Eton, at least in the spelling of its name. Last night, I was privileged to visit Elton high school and join the pupils, staff and governors for their annual awards evening. The school is thriving and is now in the upper 25 per cent. of the most improving schools in the country. It had record GCSE results this year and has a broad and balanced curriculum. It has innovated and is now a specialist art school, where the pupils are committed to their studies and happy and motivated to be there.
	I mention Elton school because it undermines the basic assumption that underlies the Conservatives' attack on the Government's record. The school is firmly within the local authority system, and is nevertheless one of the most highly regarded schools in not only my local authority but neighbouring local authorities. I pay tribute to the work of the head teacher, Mr. Neil Scruton, his chair of governors, Mr. Jeff Coles, and the staff and pupils of the school.
	What I am struggling to understand about the Conservative document launched yesterdayI have not read it in detail; I have heard bits about itis how the new education policy of Cameron's Conservatives, who are trying to be touchy-feely, liberal, progressive modernisers, is in any way different from the policy of Thatcher's Conservatives. The Conservatives still have a fundamental commitment to wholesale privatisation and fragmentation of the system and to seeing the individual school as the basic unit, not understanding the need for schools to operate within a co-operative framework.

David Taylor: Does my hon. Friend agree that many Conservatives still covertly believe in the policy encapsulated in the phrase A grammar school in every town? That is their real, secret agenda, is it not?

David Chaytor: My hon. Friend makes an important point. That is the hidden agenda, and we could see that from the expression on the shadow Secretary of State's face. Throughout his speech, he found it extremely difficult to keep a straight face, in his new-born commitment to liberal, progressive modernity. Indeed, I would go further back. The shadow Secretary of State spoke about the miraculous assumptions of some aspects of Government policy, but he was the personification of miraculous assumptions, in what he was saying about the way forward. He combined that with a kind of immaculate conception. It was almost as if Keith Joseph had come back to speak to us. Indeed, there was nothing that he said with which Keith Joseph would have disagreed.
	It seems to meI am looking to the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb) to clarify this, because he is a thoughtful Member of Parliamentthat the Conservatives' approach is riddled with contradictions. On the one hand, they keep telling us that they want to give more freedom to schools and head teachers, pass down more power to parents, lift the dead hand of bureaucracy, move away from the command economy and take centralisation out of the system. On the other, they want to tell every pupil in the country that they must keep their shirts firmly tucked in their trousers and every teacher that every time anyone walks through their classroom door, every child in that classroom mustday in, day out, week in, week out, month in, month outstand to attention. That is a level of prescription that Joseph Stalin could not have dreamed of, and it blows out of the water any commitment to trusting the professional judgment of teachers and head teachers that the Conservatives want us to believe they support.

Angela Watkinson: What the hon. Gentleman is talking about is courtesy and respect. Those habits that are learned in school will serve pupils well all their lives. He denigrates grammar schools, but what we need is grammar school standards in every school, whether it be an academy, a comprehensive school or whatever else. Good standards of behaviour and discipline, aspiration and achievementwho would deny any child that in whatever school they attend?

David Chaytor: The hon. Lady has given the game away. Neither she nor her party can distinguish between the form and the substance. The substance of courtesy and respect is of course absolutely necessary; the precise form that it takes is a matter for the judgment of each school.
	The Conservative party is not the only opposition party to have a contradictory approach. I wanted to ask the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) earlier how he reconciles his commitment to the importance of local authorities having a strategic role with the clear call on the Government in the Liberal Democrats' amendment to
	ensure parental choice rather than schools choice by ending selection to Academies by aptitude and other means.
	I support that policy, but if the local authority has a strategic role, how can the hon. Gentleman defend only academies having to end selection by aptitude and other means, while sustaining that approach with local authority schools? Would he go further and say that he believes that local authority schools should also end selection by aptitude and other means?

David Laws: Yes. I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman that we should end that selective power in specialist and other schools. Does he not understand that we are not only saying that there should be a strategic local authority role, but that the local authority should not have to run every maintained school?

David Chaytor: I understand that perfectly, because that has been the case since the passing of the Education Reform Act 1988. The only people who seem to think that local authorities run every school are the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. Certainly nobody on the Government Benches thinks that that is how the system in this country could reasonably be described.
	I should like to say a word or two about choice and selection. The ground of this debate, which has been going on for 40 years or more, fundamentally shifted when the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) made his speech earlier this year. Only last week, in the debate on the Loyal Address, I was able to read the key extract of his speech, in which he finally admitted that a selective admissions policyselection by academic abilityentrenches disadvantage rather than eroding it. From that moment on, regardless of the divisions in the Conservative party, the ground of the debate shifted. I welcome the fact that the Opposition have included in their motion a clear commitment to
	all-ability schools in the state sector,
	albeit in their call for new providers to open them. I also welcome the clear commitment in the Liberal Democrats' amendment to eliminating selection by various means.
	However, we have to be clear about the issue of choice. It is a simple matter: either we want schools to choose pupils through various forms of selection, such as academic selection, which exists in some areas, selection by aptitude or a variety of fairly dubious proxies, or we want parents to be able to choose schools. I am firmly on the latter side of the argument. However, we must accept that the historical legacy of the location of our schools and the distribution of population mean that it is logistically impossible for every parent in the country to secure their first choice school, unless the Government are committed to a massive expansion in their budgets, to keep thousands and thousands of spare places open.
	We heard from the official Opposition yesterday that they are doing precisely the opposite, because they intend to take a huge sliceI think that the figure was 4.5 billionout of the building schools for the future programme. They have to understand that choice can operate only in a fair, balanced and regulated framework, where the objective is to ensure that parents secure their first choice school, but where that is balanced by other factors. Otherwise, the exercise of choice by some individuals can, if not operating in a fair framework, simply mean the denial of choice to others. It is the central role of the Government and of local authorities to ensure that we have that fair and balanced framework, which maximises choice to the benefit of the greatest number of parents.
	I should like to make a point about good schools and good GCSEs. A comment that I have made to a number of Ministers for education is that although the Government have been extremely successful in driving up standards over a 10-year period and in enabling thousands of young people to obtain qualifications that they would not have obtained beforeit really is as simple as thatthe focus on good GCSEs nevertheless has a downside. The target of five A to C grades has a general level of support, but every time we describe such grades as good GCSEs, we are saying to the young people who do not achieve them that their GCSEs are somehow no good, and that they have failed miserably to achieve what we expect of them. We are sending that message not only to those young people, but to their parents. I have discussed this point with my hon. Friend the Minister for Schools and Learners, and with his predecessors, but I would like to appeal again for a different way to describe levels of achievement. I am not talking about manipulating targetstargets are important and I want to see results improving year on year, and to see children achieving more year on yearbut we have to find a different kind of language.
	We have to find a different kind of language to describe schools as well. It is too easy just to talk about a good school. In my experienceI think most Ofsted inspectors would agree with thisthere are good schools, but most schools are good at something. To assume that there is a category of schools defined as good and another that is defined as failing is utterly simplistic and does not accurately describe what is taking place. Furthermore, we all too often fall into the trap of defining a school as good because it happens to have a favourable intake. Again, I ask the Government to revisit the kind of language that we use. We need to find a better, richer language to describe the range of schools that we have, their many qualities and the many ways in which they advance the education and achievement of their pupils.
	In respect of language, I should also like to make a point about the 14-to-19 diplomas. In the Queen's Speech debate last week, I made an appeal for us to look again at Sir Mike Tomlinson's original report on the relationship between A-levels, GCSEs and the new diplomas. I now want to ask my hon. Friend the Minister to think again about the use of the words vocational and academic. In theory, there is cross-party consensus that we need to bridge the academic-vocational divide. In my view, however, that will not be achieved as long as we continue to use the terms vocational and academic. Again, we need a richer, more careful language to describe the range of subjects in the curriculum, and the range of knowledge and skills that young people require to pursue different careers.
	For example, we can ask the simple question: is maths an academic subject or a vocational subject? For someone going to university to do a degree in maths, physics or information technology, maths is an academic subject. However, for someone training to be an electrician, a plumber or a joiner, it is vocational. This is an issue for all Members of the House, head teachers, teachers and parents, and we really need to revisit it, to determine the best way of describing the range of subjects, knowledge and skills in the curriculum. I have noticed the word applied creeping into recent speeches. Perhaps the terms theoretical and applied would provide better ways of achieving this.
	I want to touch briefly on the subject of special educational needs. Reference has been made by other hon. Members to the Select Committee's report on SEN, which I believe moved the debate forward a little. I still think that we have a major problem with statementing, however. The noble Baroness Warnock's speech two years ago calling for a rethink on statementing and on the categorisation of SEN was really important. I am not sure that the Select Committeeof which I was then a memberor the Government's response have fully taken that report on board.
	The basic principle should be that, in reality, the vast majority of children have special educational needs of one kind or another. For many children, those needs will be fairly minor, but they need to be recognised none the less. By focusing on SEN as a distinct category of people with highly visible disabilities, and on the statementing process, we have overlooked the less dramatic, less obvious needs of large numbers of children who nevertheless need a little more attention than the present system can provide.
	Finally, I should like to put three questions to my hon. Friend the Minister. First, is it the case that, as the schools commissioner goes round the country looking at local authorities' plans for building schools for the future, he is requiring the authorities to adopt academies if they are going to secure BSF money? If that is the case, it needs to be made public and a matter of policy. If it is being done quietly, on the side, I do not believe that that is the best way of handling this matter. My own local authority might well be interested in having an academy in the near future, but that is a decision that should be taken locally. It should not involve a bit of arm-twisting by the schools commissioner.
	Secondly, will my hon. Friend tell us how far the Department has got with the commitment that was made some weeks ago to review the ballot system for wholly selective schools? As he will know, this is an issue of great importance to me and to many other Members, and the Government need to keep us informed about it, and to consult widely on improvements to the present ballot arrangements. Thirdly, will my hon. Friend confirm the ongoing importance of the historic commitment made by the Prime Minister, when he was Chancellor, not only to narrow the gap between per-pupil funding in state schools and that in private schools, but to close it? Will my hon. Friend also tell us in what time scale he thinks it would be feasible to achieve that?

Graham Stuart: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor), whose knowledge of and commitment to education are widely recognised. To pick up on his question, it would be fascinating to hear from the Minister whether the present Prime Minister's promise was just spin and whether there is a timetable for fulfilling that commitment. The hon. Member for Bury, North will acknowledge that it would be fantastic if the Minister could do that, but I fear he will not.
	It is a pleasure to take part in this debate. The Conservative motion is extremely positive about the academies programme. It offers the new, young Secretary of State the opportunity to remove some of the kinks in his policy making, and to give the programme his full backing. The word choice came out of his mouth as though it were a swear word; he just about managed to utter it, but not with any real enthusiasm. Instead, astonishingly, he spent almost all his speech attacking the Conservatives for proposing such a positive motion in support of what we hope will be an ongoing academies programme, building on the many achievements of the previous Conservative Government.
	A Liberal MP, William Forster, drafted the Education Act 1870, and a Conservative politician, Rab Butler, introduced the Education Act 1944, which made secondary education free of charge for all pupils, so let no one doubt that the Conservatives care passionately about the start in life that our younger people, from all backgrounds, experience. That is why we put country before party and voted for the Education and Inspections Act 2006, and why we published yesterday's green paper a full two years before the expected date of the general election. On matters of such importance, we are always prepared to put country before party and to work with the Government to do the right thing.
	I challenge the Minister to face down those on his Back Benches, and in too many Labour-run local authorities, who do not back the academies programme. I think that the hon. Member for Bury, North's enthusiasm is somewhat muted, although he did not elaborate on that today. I should be happy to take an intervention if he wants to show that enthusiasm, which I hope the whole House would be able to express today.
	I shall concentrate on social mobility, which is the reason we need educational reform. The record of successive Governments, as a body of evidence shows, has been poor. A 2005 study by the London School of Economics compared the life chances of British children with those of children in the US, Canada, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. It examined the extent to which childhood circumstances influenced adult economic success. Social mobility was found to be greatest in Norway and Sweden, and Canada and Germany also did well. It was virtually static in the US, and the gap in opportunities between the rich and poor in Britain was found to be widening.
	I give the Government credit for doubling in real termscertainly in cash termsthe amount spent on education, but the social outcomes for which incoming Ministers might have hoped in 1997 have not been delivered. That is why we need reform. That is why we need the positive approach of Conservative Front Benchers, who say that we must extend the academies programme to make choice real, while also allowing the establishment of new schools. We must allow charities and other groups to set up new schools; otherwise, the supply system of choice will be taken over entirely by middle-class parents, using their ability to work the system to the benefit of their children, and we will not have the uplift for those from deprived areas that the whole House sincerely wants.

David Taylor: The hon. Gentleman talks about the disappointing track record on social mobility of successive Governments, but does he agree that academies are not likely to improve it when 7 per cent. of young people educated in private schools bag 40 per cent. of places at the top 20 universities in the UK? That distortion or skew does not happen in the other countries that he cited at the start of his speech.

Graham Stuart: The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point, which helps my argument immensely. His own figure shows the comparative failure of the state sector, despite record funding, to match the private sector. It shows up the false promise made by the Prime Minister that funding in the state sector would somehow match that of the independent sector. Some of the independent schools that are bagging those university places receive little more moneyin some cases, even lessthan the average state school, yet they have the successes. Why? It is because of their culture, and because the system itself is important. It is no use Ministers suggesting, as the Prime Minister did earlier, that it is somehow the universities' fault for failing to select children from schools that are not raising standards sufficiently. The key point is the failure by those schools to raise standards.

Stephen Pound: The hon. Gentleman makes a persuasive case. In view of his last comments, would he support the removal of the charitable status advantage that the private education sector enjoys in an effort to level the playing field?

Graham Stuart: That is an interesting point [Interruption.] No, absolutely not. When parents, many of whom are not wealthy, are forced to spend their every penny to escape the failing schools around them, and to pay the tax burden for state schools as well as the additional fees for their children's education, it is nonsense to propose to remove charitable status from high quality education institutions. What we need to do is bring the choice that exists in the independent sector to the state sector, so that poorer parents are able to use their power as educational consumers to find the best for their children. In places such as Hull, parents are desperate for the opportunity to find better education for their children.
	I hope that the Secretary of State and the Minister who will reply will redouble their efforts to bring those opportunities to parents and children. For 10 years, the previous Prime Minister was held back by the Secretary of State's former political masterand perhaps current one, too. We need a fully reforming Government, who can capture the optimism and hope of Conservative Front Benchers and offer opportunity for all rather than guaranteed failure for so many at the bottom of the social pile.

Nick Gibb: We have had an excellent debate and it is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart).
	Our debate has been about the academies programme, but also about reform. Our party believes that giving schools more autonomy and freedom to manage themselves, and bringing in new providers, will help to raise standards. That can be seen in practice at Mossbourne academy in Hackney, where half the children qualify for free school meals, 40 per cent. speak English as a second language and a quarter are on the special needs register. Yet in this year's key stage 3 SATs results, 92 per cent. achieved level 5 or above in English and 93 per cent. did so in maths. That puts the school on track for 80 per cent. to achieve five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C, including English and maths. We should compare that with the figure for most comprehensives in leafy suburbs, and with the national average of 46 per cent.
	Mossbourne is an excellent school with exemplary behaviour and a strict school uniform policy that is strictly enforced. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) was so disparaging about that approach to education. Children do stand up at that school

David Chaytor: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Nick Gibb: Very briefly.

David Chaytor: The hon. Gentleman must accept that a policy directed from the centre of national Government that tells every school what every child in every classroom must do every time the door opens and an adult walks in is absolutely absurd. Has he calculated how many times children will be standing up and sitting down during a school year?

Nick Gibb: Well, it seems to work, and what matters is policies that actually work rather than those that are based on assertionor on ideology, as in the hon. Gentleman's case. There is nothing contradictory in wanting more freedom for schools, especially from the hundreds of directives that come out of the Department every year, full of prescriptions about a whole range of issues. We just want two or three priorities to be achieved: better reading, better discipline and children taught according to their ability.

David Laws: I appreciate what the hon. Gentleman seeks to achieve through some of his policies, but does he not agree that his party is sending a contradictory message? It talks about more freedom for schools, but it is being incredibly prescriptive on issues such as setting. Is it right for his party to be so prescriptive if it also wishes to give greater freedoms?

Nick Gibb: We are discussing the freedom to manage schools without interference from political bodies such as local authorities and a whole range of other organisations. Ministers must have certain key priorities. It is well known that there is a massive amount of evidence on reading. We are not dictating; we are saying that there is best practice and that Ofsted will expect schools to adopt it unless they can demonstrate that they are achieving better results through other methods.

David Laws: That was almost a get-out clause, but let me quote from the Conservative party green paper. I recognise that setting works for many youngsters, but page 33 of the document states:
	We will therefore alter guidance...to ensure that schools...set all academic subjects by ability.
	Is it really appropriate for the Governmentthe current one or a Conservative Administrationto dictate to that extent?

Nick Gibb: If that is what the evidence shows works. The Liberal Democrat spokesman tabled amendments at the Committee stage of an education Bill that were full of prescriptive proposals. The hon. Member for Bury, North has a range of prescriptive measures that he would like to apply to schools; they just happen to be prescriptive measures with which he agrees. Those are the measures that we want to sweep away.
	All Members want prescriptive measures for our schools. All Members want a de minimis level of academic standards in our schools. We want freedom for schools to manage themselves, but there must be minimum standards. Schools will be expected to adopt best practice and Ofsted will ensure that schools deliver, but there will be no centrally imposed diktat, and certainly much less than the centrally imposed diktats that emanate from the Secretary of State's Department. Sixty-page documents with detailed prescriptions about children sitting and concentrating are what come out of his Department today and for as long as he presides over it.
	The Opposition are happy to defend the academies programmemore so, perhaps than Labour Members. The Education and Skills Committee report published in 2005 expressed concern that
	some academies seem not to have improved results compared with the school that was previously on their site.
	However, that was early in the academies programme, and we must not forget that academies replaced schools that were failing desperately in some of the most deprived parts of the country. In all but five cases the academies took on existing staff and pupils, and it takes time to see the effects of the new leadership and ethos that academies bring to education.
	Earlier this year, the National Audit Office produced a report into academies that concluded:
	GCSE performance is improving faster in academies than in other types of school, including those in similar circumstances.
	The Specialist Schools and Academies Trust points out that overall the percentage of free school meals eligibility in academies is 38 per cent., compared with the national average of 14 per cent. It points out, however, that by
	tackling issues related to areas of social disadvantage, the academies programme is improving education for thousands of children who previously did not have such opportunities.
	The truth is that academies are simply city technology colleges, a concept introduced by the previous Conservative Government, with a new Labour wrapperthe hon. Member for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush (Mr. Slaughter) appears to have conveniently forgotten that.

Jim Knight: How many were there?

Nick Gibb: About 20, but we must remember that CTCs were introduced in the last few years of the previous Government, whereas this Government have been in power for 10 years and there are still only 83 academies. We must be realistic: when we examine the results of the CTCs, we see what several years of freedom and effective leadership can achieve. Conor Ryan, a former Labour education special adviser, points out in his excellent blog, which I recommend to Labour Members, that CTCs beat many fee-paying independent schools in their GCSE results.
	The top performing CTC is Thomas Telford school. It has a genuinely comprehensive intake, and 100 per cent. of its pupils achieve five or more GCSEs95 per cent. do so when English and maths are included. More than that, 100 per cent. of pupils achieved 12 or more GCSEs, including vocational equivalents. Even when one strips out the vocational qualifications, the school remains the best performing comprehensive in the country. Last year, 88 per cent. of pupils at the Harris city academy in Crystal Palace achieved five or more GCSEs75 per cent. did so when English and maths are included.
	The key to this success was the freedom that academies and CTCs were given, but that is slowly being eroded by the Secretary of State. He said in a parliamentary statement:
	At the heart of the innovation in the curriculum that academies make possible is flexibility, which we will maintain for all new academiesbuilt on the platform of the core national curriculum that, as with most existing academies, all new academies will follow in English, maths, science, and information and communications technology.[ Official Report, 10 July 2007; Vol. 462, c. 1322.]
	That is Sir Humphrey speak for, Academies will no longer be exempt from the requirements of the national curriculum.
	That confirms the fear expressed by the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) that the Secretary of State is creating a system of academies in name but not in substance. He is also right to say that the drive behind the academies programme is to bring into education the innovation and excellence that head teachers such as William Atkinson bring to their schools. He could also have mentioned Sir Michael Wilshaw at Mossbourne community academy, Sir Kevin Satchwell at Thomas Telford school or Mrs. Brenda Bigland, the head teacher at the excellent Lent Rise combined school in Burnham, near Slough.
	During the debate, the Secretary of State made a strange and rather political pointsurprise, surprise. He said that our decision to use a small portion of the building schools for the future budget to build new schools is somehow a cut in spending on building new schools. That does not make sense. He went on about the dangers of teaching creationism without mentioning any school where that happens. Under our proposals, new academies will be bound by section 157 of the Education Act 2002, which sets out the curriculum requirements for independent schools.
	The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) mentioned synthetic phonics, saying that what mattered was a systematic approach. That is right, but it is also important that children should not be asked to guess words that they do not know on the basis of the story or the picture. That is the key principle behind synthetic phonics, and it drove out illiteracy from West Dunbartonshire.

David Chaytor: rose

Nick Gibb: I shall not give way, because of the time.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr. Newmark) is right to point out that our principled approach to supporting the Government's education Bill last yearit would have failed without Conservative votesis key evidence of this party's commitment to genuine reform.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart) is right that education is the key to social mobility, which is why we must focus on raising standards and on reform.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson) referred to the ROSE project at Havering college, which I went to see a couple of weeks ago. That fantastic programme trains young people who have moderate and severe learning difficulties to enter the world of work and hold down real jobs. I met a young woman who has severe learning difficulties. She was stocking cereals in Sainsbury's with a ROSE project job adviser standing by. I hope that this inspiring programme will be replicated elsewhere.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper) is right to be alarmed by the local authority polygon approach to local small primary schools, which can have the perverse result of closing excellent schools. He is right to say that the surplus places rule is a drag on attempts to raise standards, which is why yesterday my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath and I, with our right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, announced that we would create a new category of academy that will be significantly easier to establish. No longer will the existence of the surplus places rule be a barrier to setting up an academy.
	The fact that an education authority has surplus places in a number of its schools must be a sign that parents are unhappy, and new academies should be targeted on those areas. We want to make it easier for educational charities, philanthropists, livery companies and groups of parents to set up schools and to have access to capital and revenue funding. We want to give additional incentives to establish schools in deprived areas, with a pupil premium diverting extra resources directly to schools that accept children from poorer areas. We want to remove the bureaucratic restrictions and planning laws that make setting up a new school so difficult.
	Conservatives are genuinely committed to the academies programme and to significantly raising standards in all our schools. We are committed to setting children by ability so that the most able can be stretched and the least able given time and space to learn. We are committed to ending the disgrace that one in five children leave primary school unable to read properly. We are committed to improving behaviour in schools, so that they can be calm, safe places where children enjoy learning. Last week's Ofsted report pointed out that four in 10 children wished that their classmates would be quieter and better behaved. Poor behaviour is a key factor in driving teachers out of the profession.
	Conservatives are committed to educational reform and to higher standards in all our schools. With fewer than half of 15-year-olds achieving five or more good GCSEs, including English and maths, and with 40 per cent. of 11-year-olds leaving primary school without having grasped the basics of reading, writing and maths, now is not the time to backtrack on reform. Now is the time to take reform further forward, but that is not on the agenda of the Secretary of State or the Government. For real improvements in standards in our schools we will have to wait for a Conservative Government, committed to reform and an educated society.

Jim Knight: It is a pleasure, as ever, to respond to another debate on schools reform. A bit like Tory flip-flops on school policy, they come around fairly regularly these days.
	The debate has been illuminating on an Opposition motion that is a bit like the schools policy they announced yesterdayas much about what it does not say as about what it says. There was nothing about early years learning at one end or how to tackle the problems of those not staying on at the other. There was nothing on ending the divide between vocational and academic learning that my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) talked about. There was nothing on narrowing the attainment gaps between boys and girls, people of different ethnicity and people with different educational needs. There was no judgment from the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), no visionjust froth. There were no answers to the challenges our country faces and no policies to build on the steady improvements in education over the past 10 years.
	The motion is all about academies because the Conservatives want to talk about their brave new policy on new academiesa policy funded by a smash and grab raid on our programme to replace every secondary school in the country. They would take more than 4.5 billion from the building schools for the future programme and create uncertainty for two thirds of the schools in England about whether they would be the one in seven left out of that transformational programme. Which five of the 34 secondary schools in Dorset will miss out? Which of the 33 in Oxfordshire, or the 40 in West Sussex? Will the hon. Member for Surrey Heath tell his constituents which seven of the 53 secondary schools in Surrey will not be rebuilt? We heard earlier about Shropshire, Herefordshire and Stockport, where three, two and two schools respectively will not be rebuilt.
	The Conservatives cannot take that much money out without cost. I have to tell the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb) that they cannot create 220,000 new places without using them to replace underperforming schools and without incurring a cost. In my constituency, and in many others that are later in the BSF programme, we shall keep asking the Opposition the same question: who misses out? Which parents and children will lose out to pay for the excess places?
	Academies have been a transformational reform. In the areas that need it most, for the children who need it most, they have replaced schools that have let communities down. Their results are improving faster than those of any other type of school, as we heard from the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton. That is why we announced new academies and new sponsors today. That is why we have opened 83 academies, with more than 300 more to come.
	Academies are a means to an end. They stand alongside our other reforms, which include the new discipline powers created following the Steer report, the consistent roll-out of synthetic phonics introduced following the Rose review, one-to-one tuition in the basics, extended schools with catch-up and stretch classes, and a new flexible and engaging secondary curriculum that will start in September. New qualification choices will be introduced for 14 to 19-year-olds, such as the diplomas that will combine academic and vocational learning in a new style of teaching. That approach was opposed by the Conservative party.
	Our reforms also include raising the age to which people must carry on in some form of education. That was also opposed by the Conservative party. New providers from the public, private and voluntary sectors are running and partnering schools. We have parent schools, academies, trusts, faith schools and, of course, community schools. We have the vision to match today's and tomorrow's challenges, while the Conservative party is limited to coming up with headlines for the papers.
	The hon. Member for Surrey Heath began with a quotation from St. Francis of Assisithe same quotation that Mrs. Thatcher used on the steps of Downing street. My hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Devine) tells me that when Mrs. Thatcher was uttering those immortal words the hon. Member for Surrey Heath was organising a strike at  The Press and Journal. Perhaps that demonstrates the beginnings of some interesting judgment.

Michael Gove: I was only 12 at the time.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sorry to interrupt, but I am keen to hear the Minister. He is being drowned out by a lot of noise on both sides of the House. Perhaps it would be better to let him have a proper hearing.

Jim Knight: I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was quite enjoying the audience response.

Graham Stuart: Will the Minister give way?

Jim Knight: I might come back to the hon. Gentleman, if I have time.
	We had a debate about how we keep creationism out of science in independent schools. That is one reason why the national curriculum programmes of study for science, as well as for maths, English and IT, now apply to academies. Beyond those subjects, academies have curriculum freedom. The Conservative party has no answer to the question how it will regulate new academies to prevent intellectual perversions such as creationism from entering science lessons.

Nick Gibb: There is no evidence that any independent school teaches creationism. However, is the Minister aware that the biology syllabus offered by one of the three exam boards contains a segment on discussing creationism?

Jim Knight: I am aware of that. That syllabus requires the difference between science and the discussion of science to be made clear. The hon. Gentleman still has not come up with an answer to the question how the Conservative party would regulate new academies

Nick Gibb: I did, but the Minister clearly was not listening. Section 157 of the Education Act 2002 does that.

Jim Knight: It does not apply to independent schools.
	The Mossbourne academy, as the hon. Gentleman rightly said, is an absolutely superb school. The Conservatives launched their document there yesterday. It follows the national curriculum very closely.
	The hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) asked whether local authority-sponsored academies would appoint principals and about the nature of governor involvement in those academiesfor example in Manchester, where a Labour authority is sponsoring academies. Rather than appointing one governor, the local authorities that sponsor academies will appoint two. They would still be in a significant minority, while the private sector sponsor would appoint the majority of governors.

David Laws: Will the Minister give way?

Jim Knight: I do not think that I have time.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) talked about the importance of a systematic method for teaching reading. As a result of the Rose review, we think that that is synthetic phonics, but I always listen to my hon. Friend with care.
	The hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper)42 schools in his constituency are under threat from the BSF cuts proposed by his partytalked about a number of matters. He said that when schools face falling rolls they should close. I assume, therefore, that he is against our presumption against closing rural schools. However, I agreed with what he said about aspiration. I gazed at the Public Gallery, and noticed that a bunch of children were admiring his comments about how informative tours of the House are.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush (Mr. Slaughter) asked whether he could meet me to discuss problems of school organisation in his area. I should be delighted to do so, and to add my voice to the congratulations directed at Sir William Atkinson on his work as head teacher of the Phoenix school. I was also pleased to hear my hon. Friend talk about the importance of neighbourhood renewal funding, Sure Start and extended schools. Rather than talking about schools in isolation, we have to get things right for children in all the contexts in which they live and are supported by public services.
	I was pleased to hear the hon. Member for Braintree (Mr. Newmark) talk about special educational needs, although it is unfortunate that no other Opposition Member did so. I have looked at the 50-oddand I use the word odd advisedlypages of the Conservative green paper, and only one paragraph of it mentions SEN. That is only one of the many gaps in that document, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will raise concerns with his party about the exclusion policy that it sets out. We know that exclusions disproportionately affect people with SEN, especially those with complex conditions. Such problems can be difficult to diagnose, and members of the work force sometimes struggle to understand them properly. Students in those circumstances can be seriously disadvantaged by exclusion and, if they do not have the right of appeal, they have no opportunity to raise their concerns unless they can afford to go to court.

Michael Gove: Will the Minister give way?

Jim Knight: I would love to, but I do not have time.
	I join my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North in congratulating Elton high school, its head, Neil Scruton, and the head of its governors, Jeff Coles, on the job being done for his constituents. I agree that it is important that parents should choose schools, rather than the other way around. As ever, my hon. Friend stimulates us to think carefully about the words that we use in education debates, and I was especially struck by what he said about the use of the words vocational and academic. The Government envisage that diplomas will bring out the academic best in young people, through the motivation to learn that work-related learning supplies. The way to bridge the gap between those two alternatives is to mix the best elements that each offers.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North asked a series of questions. Being limited in the amount of time available today, I shall do my best to answer them in a letter.
	The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart) made it clear that he thinks that his party should put the country first when it comes to education, and I believe that he used the phrase country before party. A year ago, after some civilised and informed debates, Government and Opposition Front Benchers were near to agreement on that, and it is the hon. Member for Surrey, Heath who is constantly trying to define difference rather than putting his country first. If he believes that the policies in the green paper will do anything for social mobility, he needs to read the document more carefully.
	The hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton said that all hon. Members want prescription. I am glad that he acknowledges that there is a clear role for regulation and that all schools should adopt best practice, as enforced by Ofsted. Essentially, that is how most of the regulation passed by the House in respect of schools is enforced already, so that is another example of the Opposition borrowing our clothes. As for city technology colleges, the previous Conservative Government managed to establish 15 such colleges in their 18 years in power, whereas this Government have established 83 academies in 10 years. After 13 years, we will have 230, so I think that we are doing a little better in that respect.
	We have had an engaging debate this afternoon, and it has given us another chance to go around the track and discuss leadership and the confusion evident in the Conservative party. We have been able to show the Government's vision and the Opposition's division. We lead on articulating the challenges that children face, as set out this week in the evidence given in respect of our children's plan. We lead on setting out our answers to those challenges, both now and when the plan is published.
	The Opposition have changed their minds about the critically important standard for reading. In September, they proposed that children should be kept back at 11, whereas now they say that they should be tested at six. They offer no answers as to where those branded failures at six will goperhaps they will go to the sin bins along with the pupils who are excluded and unable to afford to appeal in court.
	We led Conservative Front Benchers to abandon their support for selection, although that support is as strong as ever among their Back Benchers and in the shires. They still cannot answer the Buckinghamshire question, first raised by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), but their next change of heart must be their raid on BSF, to bypass local authorities. The unregulated creation of new schools might work for the privileged few who can get it togetherI have set up co-operatives; I know how tough it can bebut that will fail the many in disadvantaged areas, and it will be paid for by areas elsewhere in the country that need new schools after decades of under-investment. That is why we should oppose this flawed Tory motion and back the Government amendment: back vision, back reform, back leadership and reject flip-flopping froth from an Opposition who have failed on reform.
	 Question  put, That the original words stand part of the Question:

The House divided: Ayes 166, Noes 358.

Question accordingly negatived.
	 Question, That the proposed words be there added,  put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments), and agreed to.
	Mr. Deputy Speaker  forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.
	 Resolved,
	That this House notes that investment and reform in schools since 1997 has raised standards and cut the number of underperforming schools, with 100,000 more 11 year olds reaching the required level of literacy than 10 years ago and the number of schools where less than a quarter of pupils achieve five good GCSEs cut from 616 in 1997 to just 26 today; further notes that 83 Academies have already opened, with 230 to be opened by 2010, with more to come as the Government accelerates its successful Academies programme; confirms that over 30 schools became Trust schools in September with over 170 more in the pipeline; welcomes the Government's Building Schools for the Future programme which will rebuild or refurbish every secondary school in the country; and supports further reforms to extend educational opportunity for all and not just some, including the introduction of Diplomas and, alongside an expansion of apprenticeships and enhanced support for 16 and 17 year olds through the Education Maintenance Allowance, raising the education and training age to 18 by 2015.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Report reached me during the Division that the Division Bells were not ringing in the area of the North Curtain Corridor and are unlikely to be operational again during the course of this sitting day. I allowed extra time before the doors were locked on the last occasion, and no doubt we will do the same thing when it comes to any further Division that the House may have.

Health Care-Associated Infections

Mr. Deputy Speaker: We now come to the second debate on the Opposition motions. I must inform the House that Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

Andrew Lansley: I beg to move,
	That this House supports NHS staff in their efforts to minimise healthcare associated infections; notes with distress the failings disclosed in the report by the Healthcare Commission into the outbreaks of clostridium difficile at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust; deplores the failure by the Department of Health to secure new leadership at the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust at an earlier stage; regrets the repeated failure of the Government to ensure compliance with proven methods of containing infections, including screening prior to admission, adequate isolation facilities and optimum bed occupancy rates; and calls on the Government to support NHS bodies in implementing zero tolerance strategies for healthcare-associated infections.
	Time and again, we have brought Ministers to the Chamber to try to get action to combat infections in hospitals. Time and again, they stand at the Dispatch Box and say that that is a priority. Time and again, the independent evidence shows their subsequent failure to do what is proven to be needed. The Healthcare Commission's report on the outbreaks at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust is only the latest, although possibly the worst, example of such reports.
	When we brought the Secretary of State to the House to comment on the report, he said that that was an exception, but in 2005, the latest year for which we have figures, 3,807 deaths were reported to be associated with clostridium difficile, and 1,629 with MRSA. In 2006 some 20 NHS Trusts had C. diff rates higher than those reported at the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, although I hope that very few of those trusts are responsible for the kind of failings that were disclosed at Maidstone.
	The purpose of the debate is once again to demand that the Government implement the comprehensive strategies against hospital-acquired infections that they have been advised to pursue for years. In particular, we hold the Secretary of State to account for his failure to act in relation to the failings at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells. In our motion I have focused on three main topicsscreening, isolation facilities and bed occupancy rates. I acknowledge that there is much else that will form part of a comprehensive strategy, including an antibiotic regime, high cleaning standards, improved hand hygiene, surveillance and new technologies for antimicrobial techniques and surfaces. I set out much of that in our previous debate in January, but I draw attention to the three matters that I mentioned, over which the Government could exercise influence through investment and policy.
	In the chief medical officer's report Winning Ways, published in December 2003, he stated:
	Some countries have been particularly successful in controlling MRSA.. Notable is the experience of the Netherlands. The Dutch strategy has been based on a policy of 'search and destroy'. This involves screening patients for MRSA and isolating those found to be positive. . .The Dutch have been able to set aside sufficient numbers of single rooms in modern hospitals and maintain a high healthcare worker to patient ratio. As a result, this approach has been remarkably successful.
	So for nearly four yearsI am sure hon. Members sometimes get tired of hearing us go on about itbased on that evidence, we have been calling for a search and destroy strategy.
	If the Government had listened to the chief medical officer in the first place, and latterly to us, we would be halfway through the process of removing endemic infections, particularly MRSA, in our hospitals, and we would be halfway to achieving some of the MRSA rates experienced in the Netherlands and Denmark, and, as the European antimicrobial resistance surveillance survey published Europe-wide this week suggests, we would have made greater progress in the same direction as France has done. Thus far, however, we have not matched its performance.

Julian Lewis: Does my hon. Friend recall the case that I raised at Health questions a few days ago? A decorated RAF war hero in my constituency nearly died after contracting C. difficile in Southampton general hospital following a routine operation. Does my hon. Friend think that the reason for the inaction is that the people who suffer so muchand in many cases lose their livesare of a certain age? If such things happened to people of middle age or younger, perhaps the Government would feel it necessary to take firmer action and act more decisively. Is not a form of ageism at work in respect of the problem?

Andrew Lansley: I recall my hon. Friend's question, and I fear that he may be right, although I wish he were not. It is clear from the report on Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust that some of the same infection control issues were manifested in the lack of response to issues of privacy and dignity. That, of course, impacts disproportionately on the very elderly. Although C. difficile is not confined to the very elderly, they are particularly at risk. I share my hon. Friend's concern.
	A search-and-destroy strategy would clearly take several years to achieve its aims, just as would a zero-tolerance approach in respect of C. difficile; we face increasing risks from new strains and from community-acquired infections. I do not discount the simple fact that even with such a strategy, there is a continual fight against the reintroduction of infection. However, an aggressive strategy of that kind is even more necessary now, as those more virulent strains become evident.

Angela Browning: I want to pick up the point about elderly people who contract MRSA and other infections. Some of the most common sites for such infections are leg ulcers, which are very frequent among older people, whether they are admitted to hospital, in residential care or seen by practice nurses in the community. Does my hon. Friend agree that, as leg ulcers are so open and likely to acquire such infections, we should not only tend to their healing, but concentrate more on the issue of leg ulcers among the elderly, so that we can see whether they have acquired those diseases?

Andrew Lansley: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. She and other Members may recall the work being pioneered by Ellie Lindsay, a former nurse of the year, in East Anglia. She has set up leg ulcer clubs and sought hard to persuade primary care trusts to operate precisely the focus that my hon. Friend mentioned. Unfortunately, Ellie Lindsay has had less success than she would have wished for. However, she is fighting to achieve what my hon. Friend mentioned.

Brian Iddon: The measures that the hon. Gentleman is outlining are fairly obvious, and they are critical. However, is not the real problem antibiotic resistance? Unless we tackle that at root by promoting more research, we will be stuck with the problem for a long time. Can the hon. Gentleman tell us what research was instituted by the Conservative Government to persuade the pharmaceutical industry and Government laboratories to crack that major pharmaceutical problem?

Andrew Lansley: The hon. Gentleman may say that the measures are obvious, and they may be obvious to him, but they were not as obvious as they should have been in the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust. From memory, I think that only about 7 per cent. of the appropriate C. difficile patients received access to Vancomycin. We have to make sure that the available antibiotics regimes are being used. In the majority of cases that it reviewed, the Healthcare Commission found that broader-spectrum antibiotics were being used when narrower-spectrum ones were available. Of course there is a need for research and the constant addition of techniques to deal with the problems.

Madeleine Moon: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, especially when we talk about ulcers, there is more to consider than broad-range antibiotics? There are other, effective ways of dealing with leg ulcers in particular. I am thinking of the surgical maggots available from ZooBiotic. They not only clean the wound, but combat the MRSA. The overuse of broad-spectrum antibiotics in dealing with infection in leg ulcers sometimes exacerbates the problem.

Andrew Lansley: I am grateful to the hon. Lady. I recall her Adjournment debate on that subject earlier this year, which clearly caught the interest of the House. Where C. difficile is concerned, staff in the NHS need to be extraordinarily well aware of the risks that they run with broad-spectrum antibiotics, particularly when they are combined with proton pump inhibitors, because the combination of those two things can leave patients very vulnerable to the consequences of C. difficile infection and its proliferation. The hon. Lady refers to one way of combating that, but another would be the use of probiotics, which has been pioneered in Nottingham.
	The hon. Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) talked about things being obvious. Some of the things on which we should focus have been obvious for a long timethe point is that those things have not been done. Let us take the screening of patients for admission. Ministers have repeatedly told the House that they are in favour of screening at-risk patients, but it was not until September this year that they came to the House to say that they supported the universal screening of admissions. I welcome the fact that they have now done that, albeit that it is nearly three and a half years since we called for it to happen.
	This is not the first time that the Department of Health has advised that. Last November a best practice code was published, which said:
	The logical conclusion of risk factor assessments and the results of modelling studies is that the most appropriate approach to the reduction in MRSA carriage in the population, and resultant MRSA infection, is the universal screening of all admissions to hospital.
	Now, a year later, Ministers tell us that they are going to put in place the resources to support screening; we said during the general election that that should be done and that the necessary technology should be supported.
	The hon. Member for Bolton, South-East mentioned research; we said that there should be research and support for new technologies to deliver rapid screening, so that when one is in a ward and asks staff about the process of managing patients, one does not find that it will be two days before they are in a position to be able to access results and know whether patients are infected.
	In the past few weeks, I have had responses to freedom of information requests that I made of hospital trusts, and the results are deeply disappointing. Only 2 per cent. of trusts said that they screen all patients for MRSA, only 32 per cent. of trusts can provide any data on the number of patients screened, and not one trust collects data on whether patients are isolated following a positive MRSA screening result. None offered data on whether, if a patient was screened and found to be positive, they would as a matter of course be put in a single room or isolated. I am afraid that that rather accords with the findings of the Health Protection Agency, which were published by the Department just a couple of weeks ago, although not with a press release. The HPA said that nearly one third of trusts did not screen all patients, only 60 per cent. screened all previously MRSA-positive patients, and only 55 per cent. screened all patients from nursing homes, despite that being a high-risk factor. It is all very well to say that there should be screening of admissions, including emergency admissions, but that has been said before and it has not been done. We want to see results.
	On the isolation of patients, Pat Troop, chief executive of the Health Protection Agency, said:
	The most effective way of controlling the spread of both Staph. Aureas and MRSA is through early detection and appropriate isolation and treatment.
	In 2004, the National Audit Office noted that many trusts had undertaken a risk assessment but only a quarter had obtained the required isolation facilities. The study published by the Department last month said:
	Three quarters of Trusts indicated that they had problems implementing isolation policies due to inadequacies in the number and fitness for purpose of isolation rooms.
	What about bed occupancy? In April 2001, the Government said, in response to the Public Accounts Committee:
	Health Authorities should plan bed numbers in order to achieve a bed occupancy rate of no more than 82 per cent. in 2003-04.
	What happened after that? The bed occupancy rate went up. It is still at 84.5 per cent., and in many parts of hospitals, it is way above that.

Martin Horwood: Cheltenham's private Nuffield hospital might agree with the hon. Gentleman, because it told me that it credited its virtually zero rate of infection to two policies: aiming for a 70 per cent. bed occupancy rate, and not outsourcing its cleaners. Does he now bitterly regret that his party, when it was last in government, pursued the exact opposite policies, which led to more than 90 per cent. bed occupancy rates and the outsourcing of cleaning staff?

Andrew Lansley: The point that I am making is that the Government were aiming for 82 per cent.I would not aim below thatand they have not got there.

Alan Johnson: That was a good intervention.

Andrew Lansley: Does the Secretary of State think that that was good? He might like to tell the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) that there were serious inadequacies of cleaning at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells, but that the cleaning contract was not outsourced. In reply to questions, the Secretary of State and Ministers consistently say that there is no evidence to support the proposition that outsourced cleaning is necessarily any better or worse than in-house cleaning.

Lindsay Hoyle: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Andrew Lansley: No, I am not going to give way; I am moving on.
	Let me make it quite clear that bed occupancy rates are too high. In the past year, the Government have reduced the number of acute and general beds in the national health service by the largest proportion since 1982. We saw a reduction of 6,000 acute and general beds, which has taken us down to a figure of 127,000 such beds, when the NHS plan said that there would be a 2,000-bed increase to take us up to a figure of 135,000. There is a very big gap. Last year,  The Independent said that the Department had conducted a review suggesting that reducing bed occupancy to a maximum of 85 per cent. would save 1,000 cases of MRSA a year. Apparently, according to speculation in the press, there are further factors that the Government know about, but which they have chosen not to publish. When the Secretary of State replies, perhaps he will tell us about some of those factors that the Department has found in its research.
	Let me make something clear about these three factors. They are interrelated, and they require the Government to support investment in isolation facilities, as well as the policy change on screening. Screening requires more isolation facilities. It is no good having screening for admissions if there are insufficient isolation facilities available to back it up. Isolation requires more single rooms, and therefore more beds. It is no good the Government going down the road that they propose, if they are cutting beds at the same time, and if nurses do not have time to clean beds before patients are admitted. Those three things go together, and the Government do not appear to understand the necessity for a comprehensive strategy.
	I shall just take a moment to talk specifically about Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust. I find it astonishing that the Government's amendment does not mention the outbreak of C. difficile at Maidstone, or the report. It really should. The House will recall the appalling failings in the standard of care provided. They were probably, or definitely, the main cause of death of approximately 90 patients, and they may have contributed to the deaths of approximately 270 patients in the period up to September last year. The failings were many.
	Of course, some of the reporting concentrated on the failings of the nursing care, and they were severe, but we must be aware of the nurses' point of view. Given the intense pressures, very limited access to additional staffingstaffing numbers were going downand bed occupancy rates of 90 per cent. or more, they find it hard to take the fact that they are held responsible for the poor professional standards when the management were putting them under intolerable pressure. The report discloses serious failings at every level: on antibiotic prescribing, which we were talking about; on lack of training; on the failure to establish an isolation ward for four months; and on simply admitting the scale of the problem. The public in west Kent were simply not told about the nature of what was going on.

James Gray: Does my hon. Friend agree that it is terribly important that hospitals own up to the size of problems? I am dealing with a case in the Royal United hospital in BathI am looking forward to visiting the hospital on Friday to talk further about itwhich is denying that there were any cases of MRSA at all during September. However, I know that my constituent, Mr. Don Stevenson of 8 Hatton way, Corsham, went down with MRSA on 8 September. Surely it is wrong that hospitals are denying the facts. They must face up to them, and deal with them.

Andrew Lansley: That is extremely important. The code of practice, which we debated in the House a year ago, and which Ministers said would solve those problems, specifies in terms that there must be openness and information to the public about infection rates. It is quite astonishing that in a press release the management of the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust tried to claim that infections had been brought in from the community. Only a small proportion of infections were acquired that way, so it was an outrageous claim.
	Astonishingly, senior managersthe director of nursing and the chief executiveat one point denied to the Healthcare Commission that it was the trust's policy not to cohort patients for nursing. Contrary to the guidelines, that was exactly what was being done, but they did not seem to realise that, so management failings were extraordinary.
	In the light of its findings earlier this year, the Healthcare Commission knew that there were significant failings in the management of the trustbut it was not until the publication of the report that the chairman and the chief executive resigned. More recently, non-executive directors and the former director of nursing have resigned. No one who saw the commission's report when it was presented to the Department of Health in May could have come to any conclusion other than that the failings in the trust's management and leadership were so great that they needed to be replaced.
	The Secretary of State says that he was not asked to replace the management by the Healthcare Commission, so he did not do so. He hides behind the commission. He has instituted an independent leadership review, even though it will not serve any purpose, because the leadership has failed and its members are disappearing. One of them took a large severance payment, which the Secretary of State claims that he can stopI doubt that he canand the leadership is not in place in Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells to follow up the report and demonstrate to the public's satisfaction that there is new leadership in place. It will take far too long for that leadership to be put in place, but it should have been put in place in May, when the findings were first presented to the Department.

Greg Clark: Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the new chief executive appointed to turn the trust has a part-time appointment, and is responsible, too, for the Ashford and St. Peter's Hospitals NHS Trust? Is that the level of commitment that he would expect to turn around the problems in our trust?

Andrew Lansley: My hon. Friend makes an important point. If the Secretary of State had taken the action clearly indicated in the report and used his powers under section 66 to remove or suspend the board and put new leadership in place, my hon. Friend and his constituents would know that that leadership would be permanent and would take the necessary action. However, the Secretary of State did not do that. He hides behind the Healthcare Commission, but that is not its responsibility. It should investigate problems and report on them. It is the responsibility of the strategic health authority in the first instance, the NHS chief executive in the second instance, and Ministers in the third instance to exercise the power of performance management and, if necessary, to intervene. They have the powers under NHS legislation, but they did not use it.
	The Minister of State, the hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Bradshaw) is always telling me that a consequence of our policy would be a lack of accountability to Parliament. Ninety patients died [ Interruption. ] Indeed, since September 2006, there have been further deaths associated with C. difficile at the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust this year. Who has come to the House to be held accountable for that? If Ministers are genuinely accountable, they should have used the powers that they claim are so important and done something about the problem. If they are not prepared to use them in those circumstances, in what circumstances would they use them?
	Part of the report entitled Developments since the investigation was announced describes musical chairs among senior executives. There were further outbreaks of C. difficile in January in the Kent and Sussex hospital; in April at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells; and in May and June there were 45 new cases of C. difficile at Maidstone, and nine deaths. I am not arguing that the failings disclosed up to September 2006 have continued to anything like the same extent, but it is perfectly clear from the report that things that should have been done have not been done. The policies were not shown on the departmental intranet. Earlier this year, the Healthcare Commission said that it was still observing patients with diarrhoea on open wards, and it saw patients with MRSA being barrier-nursed on such wards.
	What was done to ensure that the new management at the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust was in place at the right time? The Secretary of State did not take the action that he should have taken. He should be accountable to the House for that simple fact.

David Burrowes: Is not the Government's response to C. difficile complacent? When the subject was considered in January, the Government failed to mention C. difficile in their amendment to an Opposition motion. Are not they simply responding to the Healthcare Commission rather than the pleading of people such as my constituent Graziella Kontkowski and the C. difficile support group?

Andrew Lansley: I recall the occasion that my hon. Friend mentions, and also his Adjournment debate on the subject. The Government said nothing about C. difficile and, when we challenged them about what they would do, it was obvious that they had targeted MRSA and that C. difficile rates had risen because of lack of action on, for example, hand washing. They said that they did not believe that it was right to have a national target; a central target was wrong. They claimed that the targets had to be local because there was such local variation in C. difficile. Ten months later, the Secretary of State came to the House to say that central targets were essential. The Government have no comprehensive strategy and cannot even manage, in the space of a year, to maintain a consistent policy. The Conservative party has a strategy and a policy, which we would be prepared to pursue.
	The amendment states that
	healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs) are a worldwide problem.
	Indeed, they are. However, a Europe-wide survey shows that places such as Denmark and the Netherlands have succeeded with MRSA where we have failed. Even the French and the Slovenians have moved substantially in the right direction, whereas, according to the European Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Survey, we are moving in the wrong direction.
	The Government had a policy of bare below the elbows. That is good, but their document states that
	it seems unlikely that uniforms are a significant source of cross-infection.
	They have a deep clean policy, but a press release that the Department published in September claimed that trusts were, in any case, conducting a deep clean on a ward-by-ward basis. Although the Prime Minister announced the policy, we found that no follow-up or evaluation was intended, and that it is only now that the Department is trying to put in place some structure for deep cleaning.
	Yet in 2000 the NHS plan pledged
	a nation-wide clean-up campaign throughout the NHS starting immediately.
	The right hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn) said in 2001:
	This extra money will help get the basics right. It will drive forward the biggest clean-up campaign there has ever been in NHS hospitals.
	The right hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (John Reid) said in 2004, when he was Secretary of State:
	No stone is being left unturned in the battle against the superbug. We are improving cleaning standards, rolling out cleanyourhands and making sure infection control is a fully staffed priority for every NHS trust.
	He said that approximately two months before the outbreak at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells began, in circumstances in which nursing staff were not capable of delivering that priority.
	We are told that there are to be 3,000 extra matrons. What is the evidence base for that decision? How long was it in gestation? Where is the consultation document for the Royal College of Nursing to consider its appropriateness? Why a matron for every two wardswhy not a matron for every three or four wards? Where did that policy originate? Is it a case of what  The Lancet described as
	Politicians...pandering to populism about hospital cleanliness
	and not listening to the evidence?
	The Government claim that they want targets, but 45 per cent. of trusts said that they had difficulty reconciling the targets for accident and emergency attendance with those for hospital-acquired infection. The amendment is too little, too late. The Government say that targets are essential, yet they get in the way of NHS staff doing what they need to do. We need a strategic approach, the resources to help NHS staff achieve the goal and time for change. I commend the motion to the House.

Alan Johnson: I beg to move, To leave out from House to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
	recognises that healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs) are a worldwide problem; acknowledges that the recent Comprehensive Spending Review settlement for the NHS includes 270 million to tackle HCAI; welcomes the initiatives the NHS is taking to manage infection control, including a new bare below the elbows dress code, new clinical guidance to increase the use of isolation for infected patients published in September, every hospital to undertake a deep clean as part of a wider drive for a culture of cleanliness, matrons and clinical directors to report directly to trust boards on infection control and cleanliness, annual infection control inspections of all acute trusts using teams of specialist inspectors, and MRSA screening for all elective admissions next year; further welcomes the introduction of legislation for a new health and adult social care regulator with tough powers to inspect, investigate and intervene in hospitals that do not meet rigorous standards for cleanliness and a new legal requirement on chief executives to report all MRSA bacteraemias and clostridium difficile infections to the Health Protection Agency; believes that centrally determined targets for tackling HCAIs are the most effective way of ensuring infection levels are reduced in every hospital; notes that as a consequence MRSA bloodstream infection numbers are falling; and welcomes the Better Care for All PSA Delivery Agreement, which sets two new targets for the period 2010-11 to keep MRSA bloodstream infections below half the numbers of 2003-04, and to deliver a 30 per cent. reduction in clostridium difficile infections from the numbers in 2007-08.
	This is an important debate. Patients have a right to clean and safe treatment wherever they are treated in the NHS. Safety in health care, an essential element of every medical procedure, must be our priority. We have put in place a wide-ranging series of measures to tackle infections and improve cleanliness.
	Health care-associated infections are acquired as a consequence of treatment for a medical condition. The problem is not new, nor is it unique to the UK. HCAIs affect every health service in the world, and prevalence in the UK is similar to that in other developed countries. For example, the rate of HCAIs is 9 per cent. in England, while rates vary between 6 and 10 per cent. in France and between 5 and 10 per cent. in the United States. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) mentioned Holland, which has enjoyed good success in tackling MRSA, but its rate of health care-associated infections is 7 per cent., which is very close to the rate in the UK.
	The two major health care-associated infections in the UK are MRSA and clostridium difficile. MRSA is a bacterial infection that is resistant to commonly used antibiotics. It can infect surgical wounds and ulcers and, more seriously, can cause bloodstream infections. Clostridium difficile is a bacterium that naturally lives in the gut. Again, it particularly affects the elderly. When antibiotics kill off normal, healthy bacteria, the consequences can be severe, so antibiotic prescribing policies are even more important in controlling the disease.

Norman Lamb: The Secretary of State has rightly described the two main hospital acquired infections, but there have been recent newspapers reports about pseudomonas and the suggestion of a 41 per cent. increase over the past four years. Although levels are still low, reporting is currently not mandatory. Is the Secretary of State concerned about that increase and does he think that there needs to be a change to mandatory reporting?

Alan Johnson: Pseudomonas is a growing concern. We need to consider closely whether there needs to be mandatory reporting. Pseudomonas particularly affects people with burns and those who are very ill with specific diseases. It is a growing problem that we need to ensure receives adequate attention.
	The risk of getting MRSA or C. difficile is low. Last year, there were just under 56,000 C. difficile infections and 7,000 MRSA bloodstream infections in our hospitals. That is still too many, but it has to be seen in the context of a health service that deals with 1 million people every 36 hours. The Government have introduced a range of measures to improve cleanliness and tackle infections. In 2001, we became the first country in the world to introduce mandatory surveillance of MRSA. We built on that in 2004, with the introduction of C. difficile surveillance for those aged 65 and over, the most vulnerable group of patients. In 2005, we enhanced the surveillance system for MRSA and earlier this year we extended C. difficile surveillance to every patient over two years of age.

Lindsay Hoyle: My right hon. Friend may not be aware, but a company in my constituency called Carrington's has developed a fabric that kills MRSA. That could be a major battle winner against MRSA, so will he investigate whether it can be introduced further, into trusts other than those where it has already been trialled?

Alan Johnson: That may well be one of the 21 different new techniques and technologies that are being examined and trialled in some hospitals, to see whether the claims that the manufacturers make are borne out in practice.
	We have the most comprehensive surveillance system in the world for health care-associated infections. The European Union is using our approach to C. difficile monitoring as its model, as it develops a pan-European approach to monitoring C. difficile. We have introduced a wide range of guidance and best practice procedures to support managers and clinicians to best meet the challenges of HCAIs. That includes the publication in 2003 of Winning Ways, which provides a clear direction for the NHS on action to reduce the high levels of MRSA and C. difficile. In 2005, we launched the saving lives programme, a key initiative that all trusts have signed up to, in order to implement best practice to reduce infection rates. The programme was relaunched earlier this year to include best practice on antimicrobial prescribing and C. difficile high impact interventions. The clean your hands campaign, run by the National Patient Safety Agency, is now in its third year. All acute trusts are signed up to the campaign and the National Patient Safety Agency is now piloting an extension of the programme to other health and social care settings.
	We have set up improvement teams in the Department of Health that are providing tailored support on MRSA and C. difficile. This summer, we doubled the number of these teams and, by the end of this month, they will have worked with 146 trusts. The work of the improvement teams has had a real impact on MRSA bloodstream infections in the trusts that they have helped.
	We continue to set challenging targets to ensure that this issue remains a priority. Trusts are already working towards the nationwide target to halve the number of MRSA bloodstream infections by April 2008, and the latest data show that good progress is being made. Trusts will also be required to reduce the number of C. difficile infections by 30 per cent. as part of our new better care for all public service agreement.
	Alongside this drive to reduce the rate of infections, there is a concerted effort to improve the cleanliness of our hospitals. High standards of cleanliness and hygiene are not just an important part of the drive to lower infections but a core part of what patients are entitled to expect from the NHS, day in and day out. In 2000, we introduced patient environment action teams, which assess annually every in-patient health care facility in England. The inspection covers hospital cleanliness, the quality of the environment, food and the issues of privacy and dignity. Thanks to the hard work of NHS staff, and to the priority that we have placed on this issue, hospital cleanliness has improved year on year since annual inspections first began more than seven years ago.

Ken Purchase: In that context, does my right hon. Friend recognise the important work that has been carried out at the New Cross hospital in my constituency, which has moved from below average to the top of the league table? He presented an award to the hospital for that work this week. Will he congratulate the staff on the tremendous work that they have done in very difficult circumstances?

Alan Johnson: I wish that my hon. Friend had been at the  Health Service Journal awards on Monday evening, in his penguin suit, when I presented the Secretary of State's award to Wolverhampton for its excellent work in this area. I congratulate him and, through him, his local trust on the work that it has done.

Greg Clark: Is the Secretary of State aware that the Royal College of Nursing has published 10 minimum standards for infection control, one of which is the adequate provision of changing facilities for staff in every hospital? Does he endorse that minimum standard and, if so, what is he doing to ensure that the Kent and Sussex hospital, which lacks those basic changing facilities, can have them?

Alan Johnson: That is an important aspect of this issue. This is not something that we believe that we should drive centrally, however, although there are other issues over which we should have central control. It is up to the local trusts, including the trust of which the Kent and Sussex hospital is a part, to ensure that there are proper changing facilities. I shall say more about that trust later, because I know that the hon. Gentleman has taken a keen interest in these matters on behalf of his constituents, who were so appallingly affected by the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells report.

Adam Afriyie: I wonder whether the Secretary of State could enlighten us. The Conservative motion states that
	this House supports NHS staff in their efforts to minimise healthcare-associated infections.
	The Government's amendment to the motion, however, proposes that we leave out that recognition of support for NHS staff. Why is that?

Alan Johnson: I do not need to put it in amendments; I tell NHS staff week in and week out what a fabulous job they are doing. I know that the hon. Gentleman has been paying close attention to my words, and he will already have heard me say what a tremendous job the staff are doing.
	It is thanks to NHS staff that we have seen cleanliness improving year on year since the annual inspections began seven years ago. At that time, about one third of hospitals were rated as poor. Now, only a handful fall into the lowest categories of poor or unacceptable. We raised the bar for PEAT scores in 2007, and I am pleased that the NHS has risen to the challenge. Even with this higher standard, figures published today by the National Patient Safety Agency show that in 2007, 98 per cent. of hospitals were rated excellent, good or acceptable, up from 95 per cent. in 2006.

Andrew Lansley: But will the right hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the PEAT scores only get us so far, as throughout the period of the C. difficile outbreak, the scores for the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Ttrust were acceptable?

Alan Johnson: The important change is that the PEAT scores were based then on one visit and the hospital was usually aware that the visit was going to be made. From this year, however, there will be a year-round appraisal that will not be based on the position on one day in the year. Standards have to be maintained through the year, but I accept that this is not the only issue. I am setting out a whole series of measures that we are introducing to tackle the problem.
	The House will be aware that we have also introduced a strong statutory regime to support our drive to tackle infections. The Health Act 2006 introduced a mandatory code of practice for the prevention and control of health care-associated infections. That came into force on 1 October 2006 and it requires NHS bodies to have management and clinical governance systems in place to deliver effective infection control. Compliance with the code is assessed by the Healthcare Commission, which is in the course of making 120 unannounced visits, mainly to acute trusts, to ensure compliance. We have also announced that from next year, health care-associated infection inspections by the Healthcare Commission will be undertaken annually by specialist teams.
	We will continue to support the NHS to bring down infection rates. There is no single solution. In the past few months, we have introduced further measures to build on improvements already made. In July, we made an additional 50 million available to directors of nursing and a further 270 million will be made available by 2010-11 to support the drive to tackle infections. We are introducing MRSA screening for all patientsstarting with elective patientssupported by 130 million of comprehensive spending review investment. We have published new guidance on uniforms, so that all staff workwear leaves the arm bare below the elbow to assist with hand washing, which is crucial in countering such infections.
	To improve cleanliness and ensure that patients have confidence that their hospitals are safe, we have announced a deep clean of all hospitals, supported by strategic health authority funding of 57 million. This morning, I placed in the Library details of this funding for each area of the country.

Anne Main: I want to ask about high bed occupancy rates. The West Hertfordshire primary care trust was languishing around the weak category and was rated only 17 above the trust that experienced the dreadful deaths, yet we have a 95 per cent. bed occupancy rate. Will the Secretary of State address the problem of those rates, which seem to be linked to these infections?

Alan Johnson: There is actually no correlation between high bed occupancy rates and levels of MRSA, as the hon. Lady well knows. The Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, for example, has a bed occupancy rate of 92 per cent., but it has cut the number of MRSA cases by well above the national average. As to the suggestion that we should set a national target for bed occupancy rates, I had thought that the Opposition were supposed to be against national targets. We have a bed occupancy rate of about 84 per cent. and we think that high levels of bed occupancy are wrong, but the real issue is how best to manage the beds, rather than providing simple statistics on bed occupancy.

Mark Lancaster: But there is a connection between high bed occupancy rates and the ability to perform a deep clean. Milton Keynes hospital, which has an equally high rate, lacks any form of decanter area that would enable it to carry out a deep clean. What specific measures will the Secretary of State offer hospitals such as the one at Milton Keynes to enable them to carry out their deep cleans?

Alan Johnson: We are providing the funding to strategic health authorities and it is then a matter for them to oversee the process. Every trust has assured me that it will have completed its deep clean by the end of March. Many hospitals with high bed occupancy rates already have deep cleans. They usually find the capacity to carry them out around December or Christmas time. If Milton Keynes hospital has any specific problems, it should come and talk to us about them. Better still, it should talk to its SHA.

Andrew Murrison: The Secretary of State is struggling for a good news story in all of this, so may I offer him one? It is the relatively low rate of health care-acquired infections in community hospitals. Does he not think it ironic that the Government are embarking on the biggest community hospital closure programme in the history of the NHS?

Alan Johnson: It is ironic that the hon. Gentleman should ask that question when he knows that we have put 750 million aside to build new community hospitals. We are actually presiding over a renaissance in community hospitals. All trusts will submit deep-clean plans to their primary care trusts. Strategic health authorities will take an overview of progress across their area, with trusts aiming to complete their deep cleans by March 2008.

Norman Lamb: Will the Secretary of State respond to a recent piece in  The Lancet which cast considerable doubt over the value of hospital deep cleans? I can see that there are all sorts of good reasons for doing that, but the question is whether it will have a significant effect on the management of C. difficile and MRSA.

Alan Johnson: The article in  The Lancet would have been fine if that was all we were suggesting we should do. I have already mentioned a number of initiativesdeep clean is oneand I will mention a series of other measures. Of course, deep clean on its own will not solve the problem, but it is highly symbolic in that it gives patients the confidence that that is happening in their hospitals at least once a year.
	In addition to the measures I have mentioned, we are increasing the number of matrons to 5,000to be in post by next spring. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire asked where that idea came from: one particular place it came from is his colleague, the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe)whom I notice is present. When we discussed the Healthcare Commission report on Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells, she was powerfully vociferous, as only she can be, on the need for more matrons in our hospitals. Sometimes, populist measures are rightand the public are absolutely right about the decline of matrons in the past. The right hon. Lady's point is important, because the public do see matrons in a certain light. Ward sisters do a tremendous job as well, but they also welcome the creation of more matron places because they see that as important for the job that they do.

Angela Browning: Much as we would welcome modern matrons and more of them, the badge does not define the job. It is important that modern matrons have a managerial role of supervision on wards and that they do not just wear a badge and spend their time doing the paperwork in the back office.

Alan Johnson: I am told that they do just as the hon. Lady recommends in her brand-new community hospital in Tiverton, the construction of which she will no doubt congratulate us on. I agree with her point. Matrons will be able to set standards for cleaning and, where necessary, withhold payments and terminate cleaning contracts. Along with clinical directors, they will also report direct to trust boards at least quarterly on infection control and cleanliness.
	We published new clinical guidance on isolating patients with health care-associated infection in September 2007. It outlined the importance of placing infected patients in single rooms. The Health and Social Care Bill, introduced to the House last week, will establish the care quality commission, a new health and adult social care regulator with tough powers to inspect, investigate and intervene where hospitals are failing to meet safety and quality requirements, including hygiene standards. The latest data on health care-associated infections were published earlier this month; they show that the actions we have taken are having an effect. The Health Protection Agency data show a drop of 10 per cent. in the number of MRSA cases, continuing the downward trend of the last 24 months.
	Commenting on the MRSA data, the HPA's infection expert Dr. Georgia Duckworth said that MRSA has
	started to come down and that's brilliant newstwo to three years ago professionals would have told you we couldn't have done that.
	She also said:
	This is a major achievement against the seemingly unstoppable rise in MRSA bloodstream infections throughout the 1990s.

Graham Stuart: I have seen documentary evidence of a trust that wrote to clinicians saying that their foundation trust status would be threatened if the current MRSA rate were to continue, since which time they have massively cut the number of tests and have therefore shown a seeming improvement in MRSA infection rates. Will the Secretary of State comment on that?

Alan Johnson: We would need to see evidence of that. If the hon. Gentleman has it, he should let us see it. I would be perfectly willing to investigate that important allegation.
	As the HPA's infection expert said, a seemingly unstoppable rise in MRSA took place in the 1990s. The number of clostridium dificile cases in the 65 and over group has fallen to 13,660, which is a reduction of 7 per cent. compared with the same quarter last year and a 13 per cent. reduction on the previous quarter. Although I welcome this debate, it is important that we try not to play party politics with an issue as vital as patient safety. For that reason, I have declined to mention the rise of HCAIs under the previous Government.  [Interruption.] Well, I did not dwell on it, and Conservative Members should not tempt me to do so, because an explosion in MRSA took place during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
	The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire makes reference to the outbreak that occurred at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust. I agree completely with the points that he made about the failures of management and the disgraceful attempt by its chair to blame the public and then to blame the nursing staff alone. Some failures by the nursing staff did take place, but when one reads the report, as I know the hon. Gentleman has done, one learns of an abject failure in training and in prescribing antibiotics, and of a failure right through from the medical director to staff on the wards. That must come down to a failure in leadership.
	The hon. Gentleman made a point about the trust's leadership and the powers available to me. He is right that I could have used a section 66 power. However, all that leadership has now gone. As soon as the Stoke Mandeville report was published last July, the chair and chief executive went, but it was not as simple as that in the case of the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust. However, as he said, its chair, its chief executive, its five non-executive directors and its medical director have gone, and the trust has a new management team.

Norman Lamb: The Secretary of State postponed or cancelled the package that had been agreed with that chief executive. Will he confirm that the cancellation will survive in law, and that the package will not be confirmed quietly after some time has passed?

Alan Johnson: The trust has confirmed that the proper procedures were not followed with that payment. The strategic health authority was not consulted and neither was the Treasury, so there is no legal basis for the payment. The suspension of the payment for 28 days gave time for that to be investigated properly. As I said during Health questions last week, we have written to every trust and chief executive in the country to make it clear that the public frown upon public money being squandered for unwarranted payments above the statutory minimum.

Greg Clark: The Secretary of State may not have been adequately briefed on the developments in the trust's personnel. I understand that the medical director continues to be in place, and that at least some of the non-executive directors have agreed to go at the end of their term of office, but are still in place.

Alan Johnson: The hon. Gentleman is right; it is the director of nursing, who had a principal role in this, who has left. Three of the non-executive directors went immediately in November, and the other two are coming close to the end of their duty and will go at the end of this month. All non-executive directors will have gone by then.
	I shall not reiterate everything that I said in the House at the time of the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells report. The trust's leadership has been completely changed. A new chair and chief executive have been appointed on an interim basis, and all the non-executive directors on the board have left or will be leaving very soon. I can tell the House that the overall situation on health care-associated infections has improved. C. difficile rates at Maidstone hospital have almost halved since 2006.
	During a recent visit to the hospital, I announced 350,000 of additional funding to enable the trust to carry out a deep clean this winter as part of a comprehensive cleaning programme. Earlier this month, I gave the trust clearance formally to appoint the company that will build a new 228 million hospital in the trust area at Pembury. The new hospital will have 512 en suite bedrooms and be the first 100 per cent. single-room facility in England, enabling much better isolation of patients with infections.
	The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire referred in his contribution to the search and destroy programme in the Netherlands. The Dutch have always invested properly in health care, so they did not go through what we went through in the 1980s and 1990s. In the Netherlands, there is a much higher prevalence of single rooms for patients. All our new hospitals will be built with at least 50 per cent. single rooms and if we had the same rate of single occupancy as the Netherlands, we could adopt a search and destroy policy, too.
	We are building the first 100 per cent. single-room facility in England, which will, as I said, enable much better isolation of patients.

Michael Penning: After 10 years in government.

Alan Johnson: Ten years in which we built 100 new hospitals across the countrythe biggest hospital building programme in the history of the NHS [ Interruption. ] The hon. Gentleman is rather touchy about these issues; he says we have closed hospitals. We have not closed hospitalswe have opened new hospitals. The hon. Gentleman may be sitting on the Opposition Front Bench, but he still cannot come to grips with the need for the NHS to move with the times and adapt to new medical circumstances.
	The report on trauma, published this morning, showed yet again that we need to specialise and move away from the fixation on defending the district general hospital in all its former glory.

Andrew Lansley: I cannot believe that the Secretary of State seriously claims that a report that shows deficiencies in trauma care is simply an argument for specialisation and regional centres. The Conservatives have always argued for major trauma centres, but in addition to the availability of services in local accident and emergency departments. What the Secretary of State describes as a response to the report would strip away much of the emergency care in local A and E departments, which could be essential in the treatment of major trauma.

Alan Johnson: Time and again, the hon. Gentleman and his party talk about a moratorium on reconfigurations. That was their policy. That is what they were saying in the summer. They got their statistics wrong. They got the hospitals wrong. They got the areas and the geography wrong. The one thing that was clear and consistent wasno change. They are fighting a political campaign based on the lowest common denominator: any change anywhere must be wrong. That is the view of the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), as we know very well. I do not say that the report on trauma is solely about that issue, but it makes the point that we need clinicians who are dealing with such cases day in, day out, not once every couple of weeks. All the medical evidence suggests that conclusion, which is why the entire medical profession supports the kind of reconfigurations that the Opposition oppose.

Ann Widdecombe: The Secretary of State has just said that the campaign against some reconfigurations is political and that the entire medical profession takes a different view, so could he explain why so many consultants in the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust oppose the reconfiguration?

Alan Johnson: I am talking about trauma, stroke care, cardio-vascular care and cancer care, where there is a move towards more specialist centres to deal with those conditions, rather than trying to pretend that every district hospital can be all-singing and all-dancingthe Opposition view, which we completely oppose.
	As I have explained, ours is not the only country grappling with such issues. The range of measures we have introduced is making a significant difference. Our recent announcements are designed to maintain momentum in supporting the NHS to provide safe, high quality care to every patient. As Lord Darzi's interim report pointed out:
	Safety should be the first priority of every NHS organisation.
	There should be a collective accountability for preventing infections. We need to focus all minds on cleanliness, which must be integrated into the culture by every member of staff on every ward and in every location involved in health care provision. I pay tribute to those NHS staff who work so hard to ensure that that is the reality in hospitals up and down our country.

Norman Lamb: We would probably all agree that we should treat this subject with the utmost seriousness. The Secretary of State is right: there should not be party political point scoring over a matter that causes so many families distress and trauma.
	It is important that we keep the issue in perspective. Every year, more people die from thrombosis in hospital than from hospital-acquired infections. Deaths from thrombosis are often avoidable if hospitals follow proper processes.

John Smith: The hon. Gentleman's point is important. Would he stress, however, that he means hospital-acquired thrombosis, not just thrombosis?

Norman Lamb: Absolutely. I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman's work on the matter. The fact remains that more people die in hospital from thrombosis than from hospital-acquired infections. It is important that we keep a balance when we talk about the subject. None the less, some 300,000 cases of hospital-acquired infections occur every year, with some 5,000 deaths and an estimated cost to the NHS of about 1 billion, which could be spent on patient care and doing good things for patients. The NHS must take such infections very seriously.

Graham Stuart: I know that it is not the subject of the debate, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that we should consider making mandatory the reporting back to the hospital of the deaths of thrombosis patients? Hospitals do not receive that information, and might not be following the right procedures.

Norman Lamb: I am at risk of getting into trouble with Madam Deputy Speaker, but that is important. Thrombosis is a hidden problem that does not get the attention it deserves.
	Health care-acquired infections are a problem not only in hospitals but in care homes and nursing homes. A recently received parliamentary answer showed a rise in deaths in private care homes, too. We must ensure that attention is given to those services as well as to acute hospitals. Some 3 per cent. of the healthy adult population carry C. difficile in their bodies. It is prevalent in the community and is not a problem merely for our acute hospitals.
	The motion rightly draws attention to the Healthcare Commission report on Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust. The Secretary of State's statement on 15 October focused specifically on the trust's failings. In many respects, that was right: the failings were substantial and in some instances grotesque. Reports that nurses and others told patients to go in their beds were unimaginable, and we would all condemn that action.
	The report also raised issues that are the Government's responsibility. The Secretary of State is right to say that we should not try to score party political points, but he would accept that it is the Opposition parties' job to hold the Government to account and to ask pertinent questions. I want to go through some of the issues that the Healthcare Commission raised that are ultimately the Government's responsibility.
	The Secretary of State said that there is no direct link between bed occupancy rates and the incidence of hospital-acquired infections, but he cannot deny the clear evidence that such infections are more prevalent in hospitals with high occupancy rates. Page 6 of the Healthcare Commission report states:
	The trust's bed occupancy rates were consistently over 90 per cent. in the medical wards at both Maidstone Hospital and Kent and Sussex Hospital. Higher bed occupancy led to less time for thorough cleaning of beds and the areas around them between one patient's moving and another occupying the same bed.
	That is pretty clear, and the Government need to take careful note of what the Healthcare Commission says. Later, the report states:
	The report of the National Audit Office in 2004 found that preventing infections continued to be adversely affected by other NHS trust-wide policies and priorities. The increased throughput of patients to meet performance targets resulted in considerable pressure towards higher bed occupancy, which was not always consistent with good infection control and bed management practices. Higher bed occupancy meant that there was less time for thorough cleaning of beds and bed spaces between admissions of individual patients and a higher probability of transmission of infection between patients. Seventy-one per cent. of trusts were still operating in bed occupancy levels higher than the 82 per cent. that the Department of Health reported it hoped to achieve by 2003-04.
	That is how the Healthcare Commission reported these concerns, so what has happened? The recent Liberal Democrat analysis of official Government figures found that almost half of NHS trusts have occupancy rates above the recommended level, that a quarter have occupancy rates above 90 per cent, and that 22 hospitals have occupancy rates above 95 per cent. Hospitals are frequently completely full, and the Secretary of State must recognise that the risk is that corners will be cut, as the commission suggested.

Graham Stuart: I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. The chief executive of Hull royal infirmary, my local hospital, has spoken to me about the difficulty of combining high bed occupancy rates with a suitable and proper cleaning regime. Does he agree that, to find out the truth, the Secretary of State need only go to his local hospital?

Norman Lamb: The evidence is overwhelming. I am worried that, rather than moving in the right direction towards the level that the Department believes to be appropriate, the figures are going in the wrong direction. In 1996-97, overall bed occupancy was at 80.7 per cent, whereas it had reached 85.3 per cent. by 2006-07. That is the average, and the House must bear it in mind that many hospitals will be way above that level, as I have already said.
	The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) referred to the leaked report from the Department of Health. It said that hospitals with occupancy rates above 90 per cent. have MRSA rates 42 per cent. higher than average. Professor Barry Cookson of the Health Protection Agency said in 2004:
	We have got to get down to 85 per cent.
	Moreover, Alison Holmes, a specialist in infectious disease at Imperial college, said:
	The issue about bed capacity and throughput really does undermine best infection control practice.
	How has the Secretary of State responded to the Healthcare Commission report? He rightly condemns what happened in that trust, but there are questions for the Government as well. Does he accept the Healthcare Commission's position on occupancy rates, and will he review the extent to which overcrowding is associated with an increased riskand by that I do not mean that every full hospital has a high rateof hospital-acquired infections?

Alan Johnson: Bed occupancy rates and the management of beds are important, but we do not need top-down targets for them. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the Healthcare Commission did not make that one of its national recommendations? The report devotes a whole section to such recommendations, but it does not say that the Government should have a national target for bed occupancy. The report makes five national recommendations, and the Government have implemented them all.

Norman Lamb: I accept that. None the less, we must take the report very seriously, and I have quoted directly from it. Although the Secretary of State talks, rightly, about avoiding top-down targets, but they have often led to over-full hospitals. The report mentions the pressure of targets. The Secretary of State shakes his head, but page 8 of it says:
	The trust struggled with a number of objectives which they regarded as imperative. These occupied senior managers' time and compromised control of infection, and hence the safety of patients.
	Page 9 says:
	We are concerned that where trusts are struggling with a number of problems that consume senior managers' time, and are under severe pressure to meet targets relating to finance and access, concern for infection control may be undermined.
	There is specific reference to A and E targets:
	One senior manager said that because of other pressures and 'over-heating' in the trust, the AE target was delivered at the price of chaos elsewhere in the system.
	The Secretary of State has to understand that Maidstone is not alone; those concerns apply across the NHS. Trusts often feel that they are bamboozled by targets. He has accepted in other contexts that an over-reliance on top-down targets sometimes has perverse effects. I am in a sense challenging him to concede that that is a factor in the problem, as the Healthcare Commission recognises. Does he accept what the commission says? If so, is he prepared to ensure that hospitals are given guidance stating that, although there are other priorities, this must be the top priority?
	The third issue that the Healthcare Commission deals with is the pressure of finances, which is a Government responsibility and leads, among other things, to cuts in nursing staff. The report says:
	Both trusts had undergone difficult mergers, were preoccupied with finances, and had a demanding agenda of reconfiguration and private finance initiative... Additionally, the impact of financial pressures was to reduce further already low numbers of nurses and to put a cap on the use of nurses from agencies and nursing banks.
	Does the Secretary of State accept that in the past two years intense financial pressures on trusts to balance their books have sometimes had perverse consequences? That appears to have been the case at the trusts in question.
	The next issue the report raises is the MRSA target. What concerns me is that, by targeting only reductions in MRSA, the former Secretary of State imposed what I regard as a political target of halving the MRSA rate by 2008, without paying any attention to C. difficile, which was increasing very rapidly. Again, the Healthcare Commission raises concern about that issue. Page 7 of its report says:
	Before the outbreak it only monitored the MRSA rate, as there was a national performance target in relation to MRSA, though not as regards  C. difficile.
	So the trust's attention was focused on MRSA, not on the bigger problem of C. difficile.
	The strategic health authority has a role as well, as the report says that, before August 2006,
	the SHA was not aware of the relevant performance of trusts with regard to rates of  C. difficile infection.
	That body is supposed to monitor the performance of trusts in its area.
	Commenting on the role of the Health Protection Agency, the report says that meetings with directors of infection prevention and control in Kent focused on MRSA and that there
	was no local monitoring of C. difficile.
	Again, the focus was on what the Government chose to targetI think for political reasonsrather than on the growing problem of C. difficile. Again, targets distorted clinical priorities. Does the Secretary of State accept that setting arbitrary targets for MRSA, at a time when other hospital-acquired infections were increasing, had perverse consequences and was dangerous and damaging?
	The next issue is antibiotic prescribing. All the professionals I have talked to say that that is the central and most important issue when dealing with C. difficile. I was surprised that the motion makes no reference to antibiotic prescribing.  [ Interruption. ] I know that the Conservative spokesman talked about it. The Government amendment also misses it out. The Healthcare Commission report says:
	Antibiotics need to be seen, like all medication, as potentially dangerous drugs.
	In 2005, a study of 300 European hospitals showed that the highest levels of MRSA were associated with hospitals using a high level of antibiotics, particularly the broad-spectrum antibiotics that we have debated previously. The Health Protection Agency and Healthcare Commission report in 2006 said that 38 per cent. of trusts did not have restrictions in place to prevent inappropriate antibiotic use.
	The Government have issued new guidance on antibiotic use, but is it being monitored? Have trusts implemented the new guidance, and is it being applied effectively? It is clearly important that the prescriptive rules are applied. When I visited Hereford county hospital last week, I was told that a new policy on antibiotics had been introduced earlier this year and had had a dramatic effect.
	Beyond Maidstone, the Conservative spokesman referred to the importance of screening and he was right to question why it has taken so long to introduce it. The Government say that they will introduce it for non-emergency cases by next year and for emergency cases within the next three years. In Hereford, I was told that screening of emergency cases had been implemented earlier this year. If that hospital and a small percentage of othersthe Conservative spokesman referred to a survey he had undertakencan do it, why cannot all hospitals? Does it really need to take three years to implement screening for emergency cases across the country?
	I will conclude by setting out what we see as the priorities. First, I urge the Government to undertake a thorough, robust review of the impact of overcrowding in our hospitals. Overcrowding does not necessarily mean that a certain scenario will happen, but all the evidence indicates that there is a link, which needs to be addressed. The trends are in the wrong direction.
	Secondly, there needs to be zero tolerance of failures of infection control. We need to get the mindset right. If senior hospital managers have failed in their duties to control infection, that needs to be treated as gross misconductit is that seriousrather than their getting a pay-off and a comfortable early retirement. That principle needs to apply throughout the trust, from the most senior people to those working on the wards. There should be no pay-offs. I acknowledge that the Secretary of State indicated that himself.
	The next point is that matrons must be in charge of the staff in the ward, even if those staff happen to be employed by an independent contractor. The matron needs to have the power to remove an individual from the ward if they are not meeting the required standard.
	There has been discussion about the Dutch approach. I recognise that rates in the Netherlands are not much lower, but we ought to acknowledge its good practice and strict process to deal with outbreaks. The Secretary of State is right that that is possible only because of the space in Dutch hospitals, but that brings us back to the occupancy rate. There needs to be space for isolation, and to enable a hospital to have some slack in the system. He is right that historical underfunding in this country resulted in too much pressure on the system, but staff need to be sent home if they are infected.
	There need to be changing facilities for staff. Again, the Secretary of State is right: it may not be appropriate to impose such measures from above, but surely the Department of Health needs to say that all hospitals should, as a matter of best practice, have changing facilities for staff, so that they do not have to travel home on a bus in their uniform. We need monitoring of death certificates to ensure that it is common practice to record hospital-acquired infections when they are a contributory factor to death. The Healthcare Commission report found, in the sample from Maidstone that it considered, that in 20 per cent. of cases where C. difficile was not mentioned on the death certificate, it was a contributory factor. In other words, if we simply looked at death certificates, we would understate the scale of the problem. In many casesI have come across the issue as a constituency MPpeople who have died in hospital had C. difficile but there was no reference to it on the death certificate. We need common good practice on the issue, so that we can accurately assess the scale of the problem. The rules on antibiotic prescribing should be rigorously applied, too.
	Finally, it is important to give the patient the power and the right to raise concerns in hospital about failures in hygiene standards. There must be a mechanism through which the patient feels able to raise concerns in hospital without feeling that they will suffer in some way. I recognise that the Government have taken steps to address the issue of hospital-acquired infections, but the question is whether they are doing enough, and are doing the right things. Today, I have raised a series of issues that the Healthcare Commission highlighted, and that fall within the Government's responsibility. If the Government intend to criticise the trustand it is right that they shouldthey must also acknowledge their role and what they can do to address the concerns that the commission raises. I think that we all agree that the issue has to be treated as a top priority, so that we can ensure that people are safe when they visit hospitals, care homes and nursing homes.

Several hon. Members: rose

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Mr. Speaker has imposed a 15-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches, but in view of the limited time available for debate perhaps hon. Members will restrict their remarks to approximately 10 minutes, so that more of them can succeed in catching my eye.

Jim Devine: I prepared two speeches for this afternoon's debate. In one of them, I assumed that there had been a constructive contribution from the Opposition, which meant that we could have a serious debate about a problem that affects not just Britain but all of Europe, and a debate about how other countries are dealing with this serious issue. Sadly, the Opposition decided to play politics with people's lives. It is important to give them a bit of a history lesson on what they did on the issue when they were in power.
	I worked in the national health service from the early '70s to the early '80s. Those of us of a certain age can remember going into an NHS hospital where there was that smell of cleanliness. When a person who worked in the hospital left the ward and went straight to the pub or social to meet friends, people could tell that they had been in the hospital all day from the clean smell that prevailed. Let me tell hon. Members what happened on my ward. A domestic came on duty at half-past 7 in the morning and went off duty at 2 o'clock. Another domestic came on duty at 4 o'clock and went off duty at 8 o'clock. Those individuals were part of the health care team. They were totally accountable to the ward sister or the charge nurse. In fact, they made a major contribution not just to the cleanliness but to the morale of the ward. For example, when they were going off on Saturday, they would take bookie lines into local bookmakers for patients. They made a significant contribution to patients' well-being and care.
	Sadly, the Conservatives came to power in 1979. In 1982 they introduced compulsory competitive tendering.  [Interruption.] Conservative Members are laughing.

Ann Widdecombe: rose

Jim Devine: I will give way to the right hon. Lady if she is not covered by a private medical insurance scheme. Is she covered?

Ann Widdecombe: I am covered.

Jim Devine: Then I should not give way. This is an important political point. It is the height of hypocrisy for Members to come to this place and complain about their local NHS when they do not use the national health service. I was born in the NHS, I worked in the NHS and I use the NHS.

Ann Widdecombe: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way rather unwillingly. He blames contracting out of cleaning services and competitive tender. My local trust has in-house services, and look where that has got it.

Jim Devine: The right hon. Lady makes a good point, which I shall deal with. In 1982, 170,520 ancillary staff were employed in the NHS in England. By 1996, the number was down to 66,7608,000 jobs a year or more than 20 a day were lost in the cleaning and ancillary service. Let us remember the process. Compulsory competitive tendering was allegedly a test of efficiency. In reality, health service workers who had worked in the NHS for five, 10, 15 or 20 years were sacked and asked to bid for their jobs back. At the same time they were told that 2.40 or 2.30 an hour was far too much.

Andrew Lansley: The Government claim, rightly, that there have been 250,000 extra staff in the NHS, of whom 107,000 have been administrators. How many have been cleaners? Does the hon. Gentleman understand that on wards at Maidstone at the time that the infections were occurring there was access to cleaning for two hours a day twice a day. That is all that was available.

Jim Devine: That is outrageous. The hon. Gentleman is right. Let me explain the process. Whether the contracts were won by the private sector or in house, the cleaning hours fell by two thirds in most cases. The scenario that I painted at the start of one domestic coming on duty at 7.30 am and working till 2 and another working from 4 till 8 was replaced by an individual who worked in four, five or six wards, whether that was privatised or in house.
	Reference has been made to laundry services. Exactly the same scenario prevailed there. Working as a nurse, I had 12 uniforms. At any given time, four were in use, four were on the way to the laundry, and four were in the laundry. Again, after privatisation, that was cut down. In practice that meant that the majority of nurses started washing their uniforms themselves, adding to the difficulties. In some hospitals the turnover of staff was more than 100 per cent. There was no training for staff coming on duty. There were numerous stories of new people turning up in the morning and working on a ward an hour later.
	We must remember the politics of the time. The early 1980s was the start of the No Turning Back group, many of whom were advisers to private contractors. What did the Conservatives do? They said that there was no problem, yet in a debate in 1997, my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) highlighted a report prepared by the Conservatives in 1990. That confidential document stated:
	Infection control costs are always difficult to assess, but there is general agreement that the costs of ignoring strains of EMRSA are higher than those of controlling them, particularly when the costs of potential legal action are included. Litigation by an infected patient is a growing hazard of MRSA outbreaks in hospitals and it is therefore important to demonstrate that well-documented and effective control measures are implemented.

Graham Stuart: Quite right too.

Jim Devine: The hon. Gentleman says, Quite right too, but nothing that that Government introduced at that time was to combat MRSA.

Andrew MacKinlay: I want to place on the record the fact that if people revisit the  Official Report for that debate they will see that the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam), the Conservative Minister replying from the Dispatch Box, accused me of scaremongering.

Graham Stuart: When was that debate1998?

Andrew MacKinlay: It was in 1997. If that Government had addressed the problem then, we would be ahead of it now and many deaths would have been avoided.

Jim Devine: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that. The then Health Minister, the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam), said
	Official figures...show that the peak of the problem occurred in 1986.[ Official Report, 19 March 1997; Vol. 292, c. 859.]
	Yes, we may be entitled to some criticism, but we all have problems and difficulties in relation to the issue. At least we have come to the Chamber and said that there is a problem, and we are facing up to it. That was not the case with the Conservative party.

Ann Widdecombe: May I first apologise for not having been here during most of the opening speeches? I had already told Mr. Speaker that I was coming from Market Harboroughsplendid placeand was at the mercy of both trains and a passage across London in the rush hour.
	I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate, particularly as my trust forms such a central part of the motion. I digress for just a couple of seconds to answer the gibe made by the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Devine). He said that because I had private health insurance, I was some sort of terrible public liability. I point out to him that every time that I pay full whack for my prescriptions I take a burden from the NHS. Although I am an OAP, I still pay full whacka bit more than the hon. Gentleman pays, and people benefit from it.
	However, I digress; I shall pull myself back into order before you do, Madam Deputy Speaker. I turn to the main part of the motion. I make no apology for repeating what I said when I raised a question with the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ann Keen), after the publication of the report into Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust. I have since had a meeting with her and I reiterated the point then.
	The crux of the matter relates to authority and accountability in the wards themselves. No matter how good the chief executive or matron, they are not on the ward all the time. They cannot be. Ward sister, however, is on one ward for an entire shift and therefore authority and accountability need to be vested in her. It is clear that that system has broken down in large parts of the NHS and in particular in my own trust. I do not wish to go over again the problems that my trust has faced, because the crucial thing now is that we look forward and try to put right what has gone wrong. We should address ourselves to the future, rather than always harp on about the past.
	Nevertheless, I have to say that, despite all the publicity around that report and all the local press and media coverage, I still got a letter from a constituent saying that she had recently visited a relative in hospital where a nurse had dropped a syringe on the floor, picked it up and gone to use it. The nurse was stoppedthis is the crucial pointnot by a ward sister but by an observant relative, who said, Hey, you can't use that. The role of a ward sister should be almost wholly supervisory. She should be going round the ward saying, Nurse, that drip is empty, Nurse, that patient has been ringing the bell, or No, nurse, you don't use that syringeyou've just dropped it on the floor. That is the ward sister's job, together with issuing appropriate instruction of the nurses as to why not to use the syringe that has just fallen on the floorif such instruction should really be necessary.
	However, the ward sister does not do such things anymore, and there are three reasons for that. First, her role has become confused and she spends far too much time commissioning blankets and bandages instead of supervising the nurses. Secondly, she spends rather too much time filling in forms. If this Government do not get to grips with form-filling, targets and box-ticking, a lot of time will be diverted from the sharp end of patient care. The ward sister also nurses, because when there are nursing shortages she has no choice but to do so; and while she is nursing, however admirable that may be, she is not supervising others. Thirdly, there is an air of what I might describe as excessive egalitarianism whereby she no longer likes to boss. When I went to see the Minister, she told me rather endearingly how she used to be bossed tremendously, even to the extent that she was not allowed to plump up a pillow because it released germs into the air. Indeed, she told me that she never plumps up her pillows at home having learned that lesson so thoroughly. What a difference between that level of supervision and what we have today. We need the ward sister bossing, however nicely and politely, and taking control of the ward.
	Ward design has a major role to play, although I know that that cannot be put right by the middle of Tuesday afternoon. I have had one very positive experience of the NHS in recent years, when I took my mother into Royal London hospital under trauma procedures. The wards there were of the old Nightingale design, which meant that all the nurses could see all the patients all the time and all the patients could see all the nurses all the time. Nobody was ringing bells for people to appear round double corners, which is the layout of most modern wards. Given that the Government are boasting about how many hospitals they are building, perhaps before they build any more they might revisit the whole issue of ward design and how easy it is for nurses to be supervised in a situation where they can hardly ever be seen.

Graham Stuart: Does my right hon. Friend agree that fundamental nurse training in attitudes to hygiene needs to be considered in order to tackle the widespread problems around the country?

Ann Widdecombe: That must be right. We need to get right back to the sorts of situations that the Minister described to me, with meticulous attention paid to hygiene whether it relates to pillows or syringes, let alone telling a patient to go in the bed, which, as she will be aware, is what happened at Maidstone.
	I would like something terribly simple: an air of carbolic, as I described it to the Minister. I had some sympathy for the hon. Member for Livingston when he described the situation that used to prevail in hospitals, whereby one was immediately hit in the nostrils by the scents of disinfectant, carbolic, floor scrub and every other horror. Now, even hand-washing is a forgotten discipline. It would be helpful if very basic hygiene practices were restored.
	As a slight digression, I also think that we need to look at the NHS as a whole and ask whether what we have is going to last us to the end of the 21st century or whether we need to carry out some serious restructuring. That does not mean the sort of piecemeal restructuring going on at the moment, which is afflicting my trust, where in order to have a trauma specialism at one hospitalI have nothing against such a specialismpeople going in under accident and emergency procedures have to travel 17 miles on B roads before they may be attended to. Nor do we want, as also proposed under the reconfiguration, those using maternity services to have to travel down to Tunbridge Wells, so that anyone whose labour runs into difficulty at Maidstone will be taken there along 17 miles of B road. Tunbridge Wells is a splendid place, but no one wants to travel 17 miles by B road when they are in severe orthopaedic trauma, or in a complicated labour. Therefore, those sorts of reconfiguration are not the answer.
	We need to consider the financing of the NHS, and whether those who can do so should be encouraged to take some of the costs on themselves. We need to face the fact that the state cannot do everythingit does not. What, after all, would the hon. Member for Livingston say to those who were told to go blind in one eye before the other could be dealt with? The state cannot do everything, and it is time that it stopped pretending that it can. By pretending, it is running a three-tier NHS. At the top are those who get their NHS treatment or who choose to go private; at the next stage are those who cannot get their NHS treatment and can go private but do not want to do so; and at the third stage are those who do not get their NHS treatment, and could not go private if they starved themselves for a month. If we do not look at the whole picture of the NHS, we betray the most vulnerable in the population.

Shona McIsaac: I come to this debate as someone who has actually cleaned hospitals in a previous job. I have cleaned up after patients who have been suffering from the conditions in question, and it is tough to do so, particularly when dealing with something like clostridium difficile, and the sheer number of spores that are produced in the faeces of someone with diarrhoea as a result of C. difficile. They are produced in enormous numbers, and it is quite tough to clean all the surfaces involved to ensure that there is no transmission from the environment. I did that work many years ago, so the situation is not new. C. difficile has been with us for many decades, and it is only recently that there have been particular problems, which I shall come to later.
	I want to start by talking about methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. I have listened to debates on this issue so many times in this House. I listened to what the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) said, and I believe that he oversimplifies a complicated subject. He makes comparisons with other countries, such as the Netherlands, but when we are dealing with MRSA, we are dealing with something like 17 different strains. The strains prevalent in hospitals in places such as the Netherlands are different from those prevalent in this country.

Andrew Lansley: Will the hon. Lady give way?

Shona McIsaac: Given the time pressure, I will not. In this country strains 15 and 16 are the most prevalent, and those strains are the most resistant of allfar more resistant than the ones prevalent in the Netherlands and Denmark. Those are the strains most prevalent in Japan, too, for example, and no one who has been to Japan and seen hospitals there would say that they had problems with their cleaning regimes and hygiene. As we are talking about such a serious issue, we have to keep in mind the science that underlies the subject.

Andrew Lansley: The hon. Lady accused me of oversimplifying by trying to draw an analogy with the Netherlands, but in fact I was citing the chief medical officer, who, in December 2003, drew attention to the experience of the Netherlands and the use of a search-and-destroy strategy. If it is good enough for the chief medical officer, it ought to be good enough for the Governmentbut it was not.

Shona McIsaac: The hon. Gentleman has missed the point that I am making. This issue is far more complicated than is often evident in short debates such as this, as we tend to make simplified speeches. Of course we should take note of what happened in the Netherlands, but if we simply transferred everything that was done in that country to the UK, it would not have the same effect, because we are dealing with different strains of MRSA.
	Some 30 per cent. of us carry Staphylococcus aureus on our body: one third of the Members who will go into the Division Lobbies tonight carry it on their bodies. Some of us even carry resistant strains, but the majority of us are healthy individuals. Staphylococcus aureus acts opportunistically, and targets people with compromised immune systems who are vulnerable to it. Most of us will not be troubled by MRSA.
	We have to consider why Staphylococcus aureus has become a problem in this country. It is largely to do with the inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics in past decades. People were often given antibiotics almost like sweeties: if someone had a snuffle or a cold, they would be given antibiotics. It was quite wrong to give people antibiotics in those circumstances, as they killed off many of the less damaging strains of Staphylococcus aureus, so that the resistant strains came to the fore and became increasingly prevalent. We must therefore look at prescribing regimes, and hold back from prescribing so many antibiotics. That is as true for C. difficile as it is MRSA.
	The Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is my local NHS trust. It is responsible for three hospitals, and it pioneered the cleanyourhands initiative. MRSA rates have continued to decline, and the trust's target is one case a month across all three hospitals. The trust has one of the lowest MRSA rates in the country, because it pioneered that initiative, butand this is a gripe I have with the Governmentit was told to reduce that rate by half. Given that it already has one of the lowest rates, the statistics become quirky. If we have two cases a month, one of which might be acquired in the community, not hospital, we will not reach our target. People will report the trust as a failing regime, but in fact the chances of acquiring MRSA in those hospitals is minimal.
	I pay tribute to the phenomenal work undertaken by those hospitals to bring the rates down. For example, they assume that everyone who is admitted is MRSA-positive unless proven otherwise. Everyone has to undergo an alcohol body wash to decolonise the body of MRSA, and the hospitals will soon progress to nasal decolonisation as well. The cleaning in those hospitals is in house, and that is welcome. They are considering more innovative ways in which to deal with cleaning to reduce not so much MRSA but other infections.
	Let me consider C. difficile. Again, I pay tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales hospital, Goole hospital and Scunthorpe district general hospital. They are working hard on C. difficile and putting in place cleaning regimes to tackle the environmental contamination that can occur from the multitude of resistant spores that C. difficile produces. Their work is phenomenal.
	The right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) is present, and I emphasise the fact that I do not believe, considering the science behind the subject, that we will ever completely eradicate C. difficile. There are 100 typesI think type 027 causes the problems that we are experiencing in the UK. It produces many toxins, which lead to fatalities. It is so resistant and produces so many spores that I am not sure whether we shall completely eradicate it. However, the work being done to reduce it is welcome. Again, we must stop prescribing so many strong broad-spectrum antibiotics, which destroy the good bacteria in the intestine, thus allowing the production of the toxins. That is a serious problem.
	I pay tribute to the work in my area to reduce the rates of C. difficile and MRSAI will not go into detail about pseudomonas or norovirus this afternoon. However, I should like the Government to consider the statistical quirks, which show that one case per month across three hospitals is fine, but two cases mean the red zone. We must reconsider that. It was disheartening for staff to be told that they were in the red zone because there were two cases, as opposed to one, across three hospitals.

Lee Scott: I shall be brief, and stick to the present rather than looking back to the time of Florence Nightingale. I begin by praising all our nurses and doctors, not only in my constituency but throughout the country. They do a wonderful job and we should be proud of them.
	I want to consider what affects my constituency and start with the case of a 40-year-old man, whom I visited at his home because he was too ill to come to my surgery. He had been admitted to Whipps Cross hospital, one of two hospitals that services my constituency, with a severe orthopaedic complaint. He was then transferred to the Royal orthopaedic hospital, so I make no accusation about where he contracted MRSA. However, he contracted it. Six months on, he has been unable to work, go out properly or function normally. It has wrecked his life. Those things are affecting our constituents today. Another case is that of a lady whose daughter took her to King George hospital. Tragically, she lost her life through C. difficile. I will not go into more detail because the family has asked for formal investigations into the matter.
	I also want to cite the case of my daughter, who went into Barnet general hospital when she was pregnant earlier this year. My wife and I visited her. I used the alcohol scrub to wash my hands, but I noticed many visitors to the hospital not using it and not being asked to use it. That is not the fault of the nurses on duty, who are simply rushed off their feet and unable to do that. I blame the management and the powers that be, but I do so pragmaticallyI am not looking today to have a political go at anybody. We need to try to resolve the problem, for the sake of all our constituents.
	Mention was made earlier of the chief executive of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells trust. The House might be interested to learn that her partner was the chief executive of our trust, Barking, Havering and Redbridge trust, who surprisingly resigned within seven days of her resigning, allegedlythe trust will not release the figuresreceiving a substantial sum of money for going on and furthering his career elsewhere.

Ann Widdecombe: About 1 million, wasn't it?

Lee Scott: Well, I can only say that the allegations were about 300,000, and 1.1 million into a pension, although those are allegations. The figures have not been released and I have no way of verifying that. What happened was disgraceful, whatever settlement was received. However, families who have lost relatives have asked the police to investigate that chief executive, so I shall be careful in what I say, as I would not want to affect that.
	When the head of the NHS recently appeared before the Select Committee on Health, I asked a question about that chief executive. The implication was that he had not quite gone voluntarily, and might have been helped on his way. That is in the minutes as a matter of record, as any hon. Member who reads them will clearly see. My point is that if the person in charge is not doing their job, there is a knock-on effect on everyone else and a price to pay, and that price is too high for our constituents. Howeverthis will come as a shock to my side, who should please forgive meI want to say thank you to the Secretary of State, who has agreed to look into the case of that chief executive. I believe that it might be too late to stop any payments, but I would be grateful if that could be looked into, and if the correspondence, for which I am also grateful, could be passed on.
	I am not going to list the things that my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) mentioned earlier, but if we do not tackle the problem in a number of different ways, we will be letting down the people who put us in this place. We owe it to them and to ourselveswe could all be patientsto rectify the problem. Let us do it now. That will have to come from the topfrom the Secretary of State.

John Smith: I congratulate the Opposition on choosing the subject of this debate, which represents good use of an Opposition day. I do not want to disappoint them too much, but I will not vote for their motion, although I welcome the opportunity to take part in this debate, which I have found extremely interesting up until now.
	It would be remiss of us to have a debate on what is seen by the general public as one of the biggest patient safety issues in the country and not put that debate in its proper context. We have had a chance today to raise some of the many issues associated with MRSA and C. difficile, but we should do so in a balanced way and look at the wider picture of problems with patient safety and of public concern about national health issues.
	That was touched on by the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who opened his speech by saying that we needed to see the issue in context. The hospital-acquired infections of MRSA and C. difficile are a matter of great concern, but they are as nothing compared with the problem of hospital-acquired venous thromboembolism. The hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Scott) talked about the tragedy of his constituent going in for orthopaedic surgery and coming out with the dreadful infection of MRSA. However, believe it or not, his constituent was 25 times more likely to come out with a potentially fatal or debilitating venous thromboembolism, which could involve deep vein thrombosis, than he was to contract MRSA or C. difficile. According to the latest recorded figures, just over 2,000 NHS patients died after contracting MRSA. In the same period, as far as we knowI ask the House to listen carefully to this figure25,000 patients a year died from hospital-acquired venous thromboembolism, yet we hear very little about it.
	The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart) made the valid point that the difference between the two kinds of hospital-acquired conditions is that the figures for the deaths caused by the superbugs are collated accurately by the NHS, yet the number of deaths caused by hospital-acquired venous thromboembolism are not collated properly. So when we say that 25,000 people a year are dying unnecessarily from hospital-acquired venous thromboembolism, that is a great underestimate. That figure comes from the Health Committee's report in 2005, which, I am pleased to say, was accepted in full by the Government and the chief medical officer, but it is almost certainly a great underestimate of the exact figure. I refer the House to the seminal work of Dr. Ander Cohen of King's College hospital, one of the leading epidemiologists in the country. He suggests that the figure is at least double the one that I have just cited.
	These are huge numbers, so when we have a debate on hospital-acquired diseases and patient safety issues, for goodness' sake let us look at them in context. The Government have rightly decided to spend 270 million a year on tackling hospital-acquired infections such as MRSA, C. difficile and some of the new conditions that have recently been identified, yet they are spending less than 30 million a year on the prevention of venous thromboembolism.
	It has been made clear from the start of this debate that tackling those superbugs is not a simple business. In fairness to the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley), he said that we needed to take a comprehensive approach. We need new research into medicines, a review of bed occupancy and more deep cleaning in our hospitals. Even if we had all those things, however, there would be no guarantee that they would have the desired effect. As far as deep vein thrombosis is concerned, however, all that we need to do is to introduce mandatory risk assessments in all patients in the NHS, which is relatively easy compared with treating the superbugs. We know that that could save at least 15,000 lives a year and avoid the tragedy associated with this unnecessary loss of life.
	The chief medical officer, having been asked to report on this matter by the Government, recommended that we should produce mandatory risk assessments for all NHS hospitals, certainly in England. He made that announcement last April. Shortly afterwards, National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guidelines were issued which contained the same recommendation for the risk assessment of patients using a relatively simple questionnaire, to enable doctors to work out what thromboprophylaxispreventive treatmentcould be applied. This devastating loss of life could be prevented at very low cost and, in some cases, at no cost at all. Those recommendations came out seven months ago, and we welcome the steps that the Government have taken.
	The all-party parliamentary group on thrombosis conducted a survey, starting in August, that was published this week. It surveyed 174 NHS hospitals and received a very good response. Eighty-one per cent. responded, and 99 per cent. of those hospitals said that they were aware of the chief medical officer's recommendations on dealing with this conditionI stress that this is hospital-acquired; this is not DVT in the communityand of the NICE guidelines, both of which recommended mandatory risk assessment. We do not want to decryindeed, we want to encouragesuch responses in future, but sadly, fewer than a thirdonly 32 per cent.actually implemented risk assessments on all their patients, as recommended. We calculate that it is seven months since the recommendations and guidelines came out.
	Once again, I ask the House to listen carefully. We have heard figures on deaths from MRSA and C. difficile, but they are as nothing compared with the number of deaths from hospital-acquired deep vein thrombosis. We calculate that since April to today, approximately 11,000 patients have died. The all-party group on thrombosis and the excellent charity Lifeblood believe that those deaths were unnecessary and were relatively easily preventable. If we did something now, we could offset the cost of those who suffer this dreadful illness but surviveusually after orthopaedic surgery and general medical treatmentand re-present themselves to the NHS. No correlation is made with their presence in hospital, but the cost of those patients re-presenting themselves back to the NHS is 640 million a year.
	I welcome what the Government have done since the Health Committee report two years ago. They have moved quickly and comprehensively, but we cannot wait another 18 months for these mandatory risk assessments to come into our hospitals, which could mean thousands, if not tens of thousands, more patientsespecially in England, but in the whole of the UKdying from this condition.

Peter Bone: It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (John Smith), who made a powerful and well argued point about an issue that I had not appreciated before. However, I would argue that it is not a question of having one or the other; we need to save lives in respect of both.
	I shall speak mainly about C. difficile, as the hospital that most of my constituents have to attend has the worst rate of C. difficile in the country. I am pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone) in his place, as I am talking about Kettering hospital. I know that my hon. Friend pays a great deal of attention to this matter.
	The likelihood of someone getting C. difficile in Kettering hospital is three times the national average. I hope to make constructive points tonight, as I refer to a particular constituency case, but there must be some reason why Kettering hospital has such a high rate. One thing that we know about our primary care trust is that it is the worst funded in the country. The national capitation formula shows that, this year, our PCT is 38 million underfunded, as it has been for every one of the last four yearsso we are talking about substantially more than 140 million. We know another important factor, which is that the hospital is very efficient, but that the capacity is never there. A bed is emptied and another patient goes in. We thus have underfunding, high capacity and the top rate for C. difficile. I do not want to make a party political point, but there does seem to be some correlation between the three. I do not believe that we could have the worst funded area, a highly efficient hospital and the highest rate of C. difficile without there being any sort of correlation.
	I want to pay tribute to the staff of the NHS, particularly in my area. The doctors, nurses and ancillary staff are superb. They helped save my wife's life and I spent a lot of time in local hospitals seeing what happened. On the capacity problem, I recall my wife having a major cancer operation. She was lying in a hospital bed with drains; she had just come back from the theatre. The ward was full of course, and they cleaned it while she was there. They started to clean the bed and above it, and they sprinkled dust all over her, because they had no other opportunity to clean the ward. Lack of capacity is one of the problems we face. If there was more capacity in hospitals, and fewer targets, the situation would improve.
	I know that the chief executive of Kettering hospital is working very hard to improve the situation there, and I understand that the latest figures show an improvement; I think we are now the fourth worst in the country, so we are going in the right direction.

Shona McIsaac: I am listening carefully to what the hon. Gentleman says, and it is clearly a concern if there is a particularly high incidence of clostridium difficile in his local hospital. Has he asked the hospital about their prescribing regimes, because generally speaking C. difficile is brought on only by over-prescribing powerful broad-spectrum antibiotics?

Peter Bone: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention, and I listened to what she said in her powerful speech, but may I move on to discuss a specific case study? A number of people have come to see me about C. difficile in my area, and one family has been willing to go public about what happened. It is to do with the case of Mr. Frederick Harrison who, sadly, died a few months ago in Kettering hospital. Let me read what Mrs. Harrison, his daughter-in-law, said:
	My father in law was admitted to KGH in March 2007 after a fall. He was kept in overnight as he had a slight temperature. They then said he could not be discharged until the Monday because no Doctor was available to sign the paperwork. That weekend the ward he was in was closed to visitors for a week because of an outbreak of diarrhoea.
	My father in law was then transferred to the new isolation unit as he had contracted C-diff. He was there for 4 months in isolation, no children allowed to visit, and visitors and visiting time was limited. Although all the nurses were absolutely fantastic he was told to soil the bed, which he found very distressing.
	We were advised he was clear of the infection and he was moved to the Isebrook Hospital for rehabilitation. He started to slowly recover, but again after a fall, we were told the C-diff was back and he was transferred back to KGH isolation unit.
	He died on 11 September 2007 after almost 7 months in isolation. There was no mention of C-diff on the death certificate.
	On registering the death my husband was told that this was to keep the statistics down. This cannot be right. This is a horrible, degrading infection and we would not wish any other families to go through this. However we also could not have gone through a post mortem or inquest at the time, and did not contest the fact that it was omitted from the death certificate.
	I think that many people would understand Mrs. Harrison's concern. She concluded by saying about Mr. Harrison:
	Yes he was 86 but before March he was reasonably healthy.
	I am not a Doctor but after 7 months in isolation C-diff must have been a contributory cause of death.
	I want to make the point that that highlights: there appears to be under-recording of deaths from C. difficile.

Andrew MacKinlay: I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Gentleman. In the last Parliament, I drew that to the attention of the then Member for Welwyn Hatfield when she was a Treasury Minister, because the Office for National Statistics has responsibility for the veracity of the death certificates, not the national health service. This problem will go on and on unless Ministers instruct that if doctors and hospitals do not complete death certificates accurately and candidly that will be treated as a serious disciplinary offence.

Peter Bone: I welcome, and agree with, that intervention. I have taken the matter up and have received a letter from the Society of Registration Officers. It says that it is not down to its officers to decide what is on a death certificate, but that they have to put down what the doctor says. I can understand that when Opposition politicians are jumping up and down and complaining, people in hospitals where there is concern about C. difficile are under pressure not to record the facts properly.
	I know that the Government are beginning to take this seriously, because I have been given a document, dated 3 October, in which the chief medical officer says:
	there is still a widespread belief that the figures underestimate the mortality associated with both MRSA and C. difficile. This is compounded by the idea that doctors are reluctant to put information about HCAIs on certificates, or indeed that they are discouraged from doing so.
	My point is that we must have tougher standards, so that we properly record the number of C. difficile deaths. Unless we do that, we will never be able to tackle the problem.

Ann Keen: The hon. Gentleman raises such an important point that I should answer it at this stage. There is a duty on doctors to record the cause of death accurately on death certificates. The chief medical officer wrote to all doctors to remind them of the importance of giving full and accurate information on death certificates. MRSA or C. difficile infection will be cited on a death certificate if the certifying doctor considers it to have been the underlying cause of death. Many patients who become infected with an HCAI have other serious and potentially fatal underlying medical conditions.
	I assure the hon. Gentleman that I am aware of the case that he mentions and that the chief executive in Kettering has taken the point very seriously. I believe that we are addressing the hon. Gentleman's concerns.

Peter Bone: I am grateful for the Minister's intervention.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering reminded me before the debate of our request last May for a Department of Health Minister to come to Kettering general hospital to examine the problems that it faces. We have not received a response to that invitation, so I would like to make it again today.

Greg Clark: I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone). His powerful speech went to the heart of an important problem, and I hope that the Minister will take it further into account.
	I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe): the overwhelming mood in west Kent is that we must move on and rebuild confidence in our local NHS having learned the lessons. If we are to do that, we must not ignore lessons that are still to be learned from the report. Discussion about the headline measures to tackle infection control has continued, but in the brief time available to me I want to mention four contributions that we must continue to take into account in the weeks and months ahead.
	First, if any possible good could come out of the report, it is that it has concentrated Ministers' minds on the need for a new hospital to serve the people of west Kent. The two hospitals in my constituency, the Kent and Sussex and the Pembury, must be two of the most decrepit in the country. Pembury hospital is a converted workhouse. The buildings that are not part of the workhouse are wooden huts. It is impossible to imagine patients and staff of a hospital elsewhere in the country suffering from such conditions in the 21st century. I welcome my right hon. Friend's support, and I hope that the sad opportunity that this report has given us to press the case for a new hospital will ensure that it is delivered after decades of waiting.
	Secondly, we need to go beyond the initial response on infection control and implement a zero-tolerance approach to hospital-acquired infections such as C. difficile. The national target of a 30 per cent. cut is fine as far as it goes, but we need to rebuild confidence to match the confidence that people on the continent and people using the private sector have in their hospitals. They fully expect to come out of hospital without having acquired an infection.
	Greater urgency is required. The excellent matron of Kent and Sussex hospital, Linda Summerfield, took me on a tour of the wards recently. They were spotless and their cleanliness could not be faulted; nevertheless we saw physically inadequate facilities. In an intervention earlier, I mentioned the lack of changing facilities. The Royal College of Nursing is clear: every nurse should be able to travel to work in their own clothes and change on site into a uniform that is laundered on site and guaranteed to be free of infection. That is impossible at Kent and Sussex hospital, because the changing facilities have space for only a dozen people at a time, in a trust that employs many hundreds. There is an urgent need to address such facilities.
	Curtains are another factor. It is imperative that hospitals have disposable curtains, rather than tatty old curtains that attract the spores that contribute to C. difficile. When I put that point to the trust's chief executive, he told me that there were plans to replace the curtains over time, but that is not good enough. The situation is urgent, so if it is clear that disposable curtains will make a difference they should be used throughout the entire trust immediately. I am concerned about the lack of progress on that issue.
	We need to consider the adequacy of the management team that replaced the previous, inadequate team. We have a new, interim chief executive and I have no personal complaints about his authority or capability to manage the trust, but I am concerned about the fact that he is only part-time. He is also the chief executive of the Ashford and St. Peter's Hospitals NHS Trust in Surrey. The headline on the press release announcing his appointment was Glenn Douglas to split time equally between two organisations.
	A trust needing as much care and attention as ours requires a full-time chief executive. Of course, we require a skilled individual and I should be delighted if Mr. Douglas, with his skills, was appointed full-time as interim chief executive. He may be spending too little time at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells although, to be fair, I do not think that is the case. However, we cannot engage in a smoke and mirrors exercise and pretend to people in Surrey that they have the full-time attention of their chief executive, given that hospital-acquired infections in his home trust increased by 88 per cent. over the past year. If there is one lesson we should learn from this whole episode it is that we cannot keep the public in the dark with nudges and winks about what is going on in the NHS. If the man is supposed to be running two trusts we need to know about it, and people in Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells need the same clear message as people in Surrey.
	Finally, as we reflect on the grossly inadequate supervision given by the failed management of the trust over the past few years, we can see that there is a general problem of accountability. I would be hard-pushed to say to whom any of the NHS institutions in my areathe strategic health authority, the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust or the West Kent PCTare accountable. If I ask questions of the Health Secretary about local issues he will say it is a matter for the local trusts, but I have no direct means of holding them to account, other than, occasionally, to embarrass them publicly, which is a crude mechanism. I hope that we will reflect on the lessons and design in the appointment of new non-executive directors, not just in our own trusts, but more widely across the NHS, a more genuine means to hold NHS managers to account.
	We should make it clear to non-executive chairmen that they have a duty to the public. That applies to George Jenkins, the interim chairman of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells trust, and every non-executive chairman of NHS bodies throughout the country. Their role is not always and everywhere to defend management. In the absence of anyone elsealthough that absence is a fault of the systemtheir responsibility is to represent our constituents and take management to task when necessary. The Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells non-executive directors and chairman failed abjectly in that responsibility. I look to the new chairman of our trust, and the new non-executive directors to be appointed, to exercise that role.

Oliver Heald: My hon. Friend's description rings a bell. It is an example of systematic incompetence, which is a factor that we see across government.

Greg Clark: There is a pattern of incompetence, but also a pattern of a lack of accountability. That does not extend just to the NHS. One positive message that we can take from the situation to ensure that such an event is never repeated is to re-inject more accountability to local people into the NHS and other bodies that need it, so that managers feel that they are being scrutinised at all times.

Anne Milton: Of all the reports that hon. Members may have read recently, none is more damning or more distressing to read than the Healthcare Commission's report into the outbreaks of C. difficile at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust. I have no doubt that the sense of betrayal among local people is immense. The success of the NHS is largely down to the confidence and trust that people have in the organisation and its staff. There is no doubt that the majority of NHS staff continue to work to achieve exactly that end. The rise in health care-acquired infections has seen the loss of that trust, a loss of confidence and an increasing sense that NHS staff are no longer in control of their own decision making.
	We have heard some excellent speeches. I did not entirely follow the speech made by the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Devine), but I am concerned that his attempt to focus on the events of 20 years ago or more was simply an opportunity to deflect attention from the failures of the Government today.
	As a former nurse, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Scott) for his tribute to nurses across the country. He gave a particularly evocative account of two of his constituents, one of whom sadly died. He also raised the issue of large payouts to senior managers, which continues to concern a number of hon. Members, particularly when those managers have presided over significant failures in trusts. He was generous, however, in his praise of the Secretary of State.
	The hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (John Smith) was also generous in his political stance and raised the important issue of venous thromboembolism. The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) mentioned his concern for his constituents, who are served by a hospital with the worse C. difficile rates in the country. As well as paying tribute to all NHS staff, he also mentioned the experiences of one of his constituents.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) talked about authority and accountability on the ward through the ward sister. I am sure that I speak for all hon. Members when I say that her anecdote about a nurse who went to use a syringe that had fallen on the floor was truly shocking. She also mentioned the confused role of senior nurses, nurses covering shortages and form-filling. She spoke with her usual and much-welcomed common sense.
	The hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac) spoke passionately about the prescription of broad- spectrum antibiotics. She paid tribute to her local trust, which I gather is a centre of excellence. She also mentioned the fact that figures can be extremely misleading.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), like my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald, was particularly touched by the recent events, which left 90 people dead, while 270 deaths had C. difficile cited as a contributory factor. My hon. Friend has campaigned long and hard for a new hospital and has been particularly concerned about the issues associated with built structures, nurses and their uniforms and the practices that are followed. No one knows better than him the urgency with which the matter needs to be dealt.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Angela Browning) mentioned leg ulcers. Labour Members mentioned research and the overuse of antibiotics. In particular, the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs. Moon) mentioned treatment with maggots. My hon. Friend the Member for Westbury (Dr. Murrison) talked about the need for the Government to face up to the situation and cited individual constituents' experiences.
	My hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) spoke from the Front Bench and focused in particular on screening, isolation and bed occupancy. He also referred to the Government's plans for a deep clean. In particular, he noted that the Department of Health had said that there was no central programme for that, nor any plans to monitor progress, and that it was a matter for local determination. In addition, the Department said that no dates had been set for commencement or completion of the deep clean, that there would be no new money for it nor any repeat programme. Finally, my hon. Friend noted that the Department had supplied no news on trainingperhaps the Minister will be able to bring us up to date about exactly what training will be given to help NHS staff to achieve this so-called deep clean. It seems to me, and I am sure to many Opposition Members, to be no more than a gimmick.
	A Healthcare Commission report was published in July in response to requests from the chief medical officer for ways to reduce infection rates. It stated:
	We found evidence that a significant number of trusts were also experiencing difficulties in reconciling the management of
	health care-acquired infections
	and cleanliness with the fulfilment of targets.
	It would be awfully welcome if the Secretary of State listened to this bit, as it is the one that I do not think that he entirely understands. He needs to grasp the difference between targets and outcomes. He does not support outcome-driven activity, but he does support process-driven targets. For exactly the reasons cited in the Healthcare Commission report to which I have referred, he needs to pay attention because, if he continues with his obsession with targets, we will not see any improvements.
	The report found that 45 per cent. of trusts were experiencing difficulties with accident and emergency targets. In addition, 29 per cent. of trusts told the commission about difficulties with waiting times and lists for the treatment of in-patients, while 36 per cent. reported that they had experienced difficulties reconciling the management of health care-acquired infections and cleanliness with the fulfilment of financial targets. The Secretary of State continues to deny that evidence.
	Moreover, the report found that 46 per cent. of trusts do not have a programme to check the cleaning of beds and the spaces around them. Only 48 per cent. of trusts report all health care-acquired infections, and 19 per cent. report none. Another 26 per cent. report less than half of such infections, and 62 per cent. do not audit readmission to hospital of people suffering from them. The report is truly damning about what is going on.
	Until the Secretary of State starts to listen, and to accept the causes and consequences of health care-acquired infections, rates will continue to rise. Protesting about the progress that has been made while denying the figures and causes will not get anywhere. The right hon. Gentleman asked that this debate be non-party political, but he must accept the facts. The problems are to do with bed-occupancy rates, targets, competing priorities, antibiotic prescribing habits, the number of nurses on wards and the number of hand basins available per bed. They are also to do with our built structure, and with training, monitoring, audit and the need to change practices on the basis of that audit.
	The Secretary of State maintains that infection rates here are similar to those in the rest of Europe, but I doubt that that is any comfort to the relatives of the 90 patients who died in west Kent. We must adopt a ward-to-board approach, but hospital boards must be able to make decisions on the basis of clinical need, not of Government targets. That means that some targets must be let slip sometimes, but a culture in which senior managers do not listen to what is happening at ward level because they fear not meeting Government targets and thus getting sacked will mean that what happened at the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust will occur again.
	I urge the Government to look again at the debate. I urge them to rise to the challenge that health care-acquired infections raise. I urge them to return to decisions made on clinical grounds by clinical staff in clinical settings. I urge hon. Members to support the motion.

Ann Keen: We have had a lively debate and covered much very necessary ground. I will endeavour to cover the numerous queries raised, but I hope that hon. Members will understand if I write to them if I am unable to answer specific questions.
	What is clear from today's debate is that we all agree that tackling health care-associated infections is, and will continue to be, a key challenge for the NHS. It is also clear that the issue is not confined to England; it is a worldwide challenge. In fact, infection rates are higher in the United States, where medicine is practised and funded very differently from the NHS. We must learn from the tragic mistakes that we have heard about and redouble our efforts, of course, to ensure that every patient gets the safe, high-quality care from the NHS that is their right.
	Hon. Members' contributions have been very informative. My hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Devine) has, of course, great experience in the NHS and put his heart into dealing with the heart of much of the matter. We must have properly qualified staff who are dedicated to being part of our team, whether they are ward cleanersthe domestic staff, as they were calledor work right up on the board, as good, positive leadership is required.
	Of course, the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) made some very relevant points. In particular, I agree with what she said about the sister or charge nurse who is in charge of the ward. Ward designs were mentioned. Of course, we cannot have separate rooms and isolation and continue to have Florence Nightingale wards, which she mentioned.

Adrian Bailey: On ward design, does my hon. Friend accept that the technology of hospital equipment is very important? Colson Castors has developed a microbiologically resistant castor specifically for hospital beds and trolleys. Will the Department consider that as part of the armoury of policies designed to curb such infections?

Ann Keen: I thank my hon. Friend for that comment. It is the duty of us all to look at every innovation and change in technology and science to help with this important health care issue. Hon. Members on both sides of the House have mentioned research, and we could consider it in an all-party way, because of the victims and their relatives and given the seriousness of not doing so. I make a plea to look at all the experience together to try to bring about a safer health care environment for all our constituents. To do that, much of Lord Darzi's review of the NHS is addressing one of the main issuesquality and safetyand I look forward to the consultation, to which Members who have spoken today will contribute.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (John Smith) is a champion of tackling DVT, especially through the work of his all-party group, and patient safety is paramount to him.
	I accept the invitation to visit, made by the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone), and it is very important that I do so. I have visited many constituencies to date and seen the improvement. In particular, I was able to see the change that has been made at the Countess of Chester hospital, when my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Christine Russell) invited me to Chesteran area that I hold dear to my heart, because I started my NHS work as a clerk at Chester infirmary.
	The hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) mentioned that money should be made available for changes in design and, very importantly, for patient safety. I remain concerned that money is being mentioned, because the money is available for such things to take place, and I am happy to investigate that further.
	In relation to the uniform guidancean issue that was raised by the Opposition Front-Bench spokesmanit is recognised good practice for staff to change at work before going home. There is no evidence of a risk of infection, but there is evidence of an effect on patient confidence, which is of course important.
	We must remember that the latest figures from the Health Protection Agency show that we are heading in the right direction in tackling infection. I am looking forward to seeing how best we can demonstrate the effects in further reducing health care-associated infections. The further investment highlighted by the Secretary of State in his opening speech will cover further measures such as screening for MRSA for elective patients. It will also ensure that every acute trust has undergone a deep clean by 31 March next year. I hope that Members on the Opposition Front Bench will note that that is not a gimmick; it is a reality. It will happen by 31 March next year.
	The private sector, in the main, undertakes elective surgery, which is very different from the work that our NHS does. The Health and Social Care Bill, introduced last week, will establish a new regulator. I urge hon. Members to vote to support the new tough powers that will allow that regulator to investigate and intervene on issues such as health care-associated infection.
	The issues of targets and bed occupancy have been raised. Patients have a right to clean and safe treatment, regardless of where in the NHS they are treated. I am very clear that if trusts fail to deliver that, senior managers and trust boards will be held accountable. As has been said, that will go right down the line from the ward to the board. There are no excuses. The management of complex systems, such as health organisations, requires the balancing of many different priorities.

Andrew Lansley: Will the Minister give way?

Ann Keen: In a moment.
	Anna Walker, the Healthcare Commission chief executive, said:
	targets are not to blame for the Trust's leaders taking their eye off the ball. Managers always have to deal with conflicting priorities and plenty of organisations do it successfully.
	Nor do high levels of bed occupancy prevent trusts from reducing MRSA. Over the last 24 months, the extent to which trusts with high bed occupancy have reduced their MRSA levels is similar to that of low occupancy trusts. For example, Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has reduced its MRSA rate significantly more than the national average, while maintaining high levels of bed occupancy. We are expecting a report from Professor Barry McCormick at the end of the year, which will update his previous report on bed occupancy.
	My fellow Ministers and I were shocked by the situation described by the Healthcare Commission in its report into Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust. I have been on the record as saying that the report was
	as serious as it gets.[ Official Report, Westminster Hall, 23 October 2007; Vol. 465, c. 49WH.]
	On behalf of the Government and the national health service, I would like to take this opportunity to apologise again to all those who have been personally and directly affected, and to offer again our condolences to the families of those who died.

Andrew Lansley: Will the Minister give way?

Ann Keen: I have not got time to give way.
	I hope that hon. Members will be able to take some encouragement from this debate. Health care-associated infections are a challenge, not just for hospitals in the UK, but worldwide. However, as the Secretary of State and I have explained, the NHS is demonstrating that it is up to the challenge. That is nowhere more the case than in Wolverhampton, where leadership was provided not only by the director of nursing, Cheryl Etches, but by the chief executive, David Loughton, who reversed the most serious MRSA and clostridium difficile infections. They received the Secretary of State's award and the  Health Service Journal award on Monday. We can praise

Andrew Lansley: Since the Minister says that she and other Ministers were shocked, and that she is going to hold managers accountable, will she tell the House when she first saw the Healthcare Commission's reportthe Secretary of State said he saw it on 9 Octoberand what action she took?

Ann Keen: I saw the report on 9 October and met the Healthcare Commission that afternoon. That happens to be what happened. What we are saying is happening on health care-associated infections is what we are doing. I ask the hon. Gentleman to support the work that is being done. If he really cares, he should work with us.

Andrew Robathan: rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.
	 Question, That the Question be now put,  put and agreed to.

Question put accordingly, That the original words stand part of the Question:
	 The House divided: Ayes 200, Noes 301.

Question accordingly negatived.
	 Question, That the proposed words be there added , put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments):
	 The House divided: Ayes 286, Noes 196.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	Mr. Speaker  forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.
	 Resolved,
	That this House recognises that healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs) are a worldwide problem; acknowledges that the recent Comprehensive Spending Review settlement for the NHS includes 270 million to tackle HCAI; welcomes the initiatives the NHS is taking to manage infection control, including a new bare below the elbows dress code, new clinical guidance to increase the use of isolation for infected patients published in September, every hospital to undertake a deep clean as part of a wider drive for a culture of cleanliness, matrons and clinical directors to report directly to trust boards on infection control and cleanliness, annual infection control inspections of all acute trusts using teams of specialist inspectors, and MRSA screening for all elective admissions next year; further welcomes the introduction of legislation for a new health and adult social care regulator with tough powers to inspect, investigate and intervene in hospitals that do not meet rigorous standards for cleanliness and a new legal requirement on chief executives to report all MRSA bacteraemias and clostridium difficile infections to the Health Protection Agency; believes that centrally determined targets for tackling HCAIs are the most effective way of ensuring infection levels are reduced in every hospital; notes that as a consequence MRSA bloodstream infection numbers are falling; and welcomes the Better Care for All PSA Delivery Agreement, which sets two new targets for the period 2010-11 to keep MRSA bloodstream infections below half the numbers of 2003-04, and to deliver a 30 per cent. reduction in clostridium difficile infections from the numbers in 2007-08.'.

DELEGATED LEGISLATION

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Delegated Legislation Committees),

Defence

That the draft Armed Forces (Service Complaints Commissioner) Regulations 2007, which were laid before this House on 8th October, in the last Session of Parliament, be approved.
	That the draft Armed Forces (Redress of Individual Grievances) Regulations 2007, which were laid before this House on 22nd October, in the last Session of Parliament, be approved. [Tony Cunningham.]
	 Question agreed to.

EUROPEAN DOCUMENTS

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 119(9)(European Standing Committees),

Emissions from Road Transport and Inland Waterways

That this House takes note of European Union Document No. 6145/07 and Addenda 1 and 2, draft Directive amending Directive 98/70/EC as regards the specification of petrol, diesel and gas-oil and introducing a mechanism to monitor and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the use of road transport fuels, and amending Council Directive 1999/32/EC as regards the specifications of fuel used by inland waterway vessels and repealing Directive 93/12/EEC; and endorses the Government's aim of ensuring that the measure is cost effective, and that the target for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions does not lead to the use of unsustainably produced biofuels and is consistent with the biofuels target for 2020 endorsed in the Spring Council Declaration .[Tony Cunningham.]
	 Question agreed to.

PETITION

Support for Armed Forces

Bob Spink: Our service men and women are the bravest and the best in the world, and we are rightly proud of them, particularly those who serve in the most difficult places in Iraq and Afghanistan. We must adopt policies that will ensure that we provide them with the correct equipment while they are serving out there, and provide them with a better deal when they return to this country. It is with that in mind that my constituents, led by David Cain of Canvey Island, prepared the petition, which states:
	The Petition of residents of Castle Point and others,
	Declares that members of HM Armed Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan are fighting and dying, and that they lack basic equipment to do their job and there is insufficient appreciation and support from the Government for them and their families, particularly when they return from active service, and, in welcoming the provision of limited free postage, feel that the Government should go much further to give help and recognition.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to adopt more generous policies for serving and returning members of HM Armed Forces, and to give them priority in housing, in recognition of the contribution made by these brave men and women.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	[P000065]

POLICING (NORTHERN IRELAND)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. [Tony Cunningham.]

David Simpson: I am very glad to have succeeded in obtaining this Adjournment debate.
	Northern Ireland has made some progress in recent times, and we can see advantages of devolution in proper scrutiny, accountability and local decision making. Instead of killing the police, mainstream republicans have signed up to public support for the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Those are steps forward towards a final destination, but other issues still need to be tackled. We need a new beginning to parading. Victims and survivors of the troubles must be kept to the fore, not just in funding but on a settled, strategic basis. Equality issues cry out for reform. In time, we must move on to a more normal system of government, and it is vital that the IRA's so-called army council be stood down.
	There are also serious issues surrounding the activities of dissident republican paramilitary organisations. Northern Ireland recently witnessed a stark and brutal reminder of our darker past. I know that I speak for all hon. Members when I condemn such attacks without hesitation. We all wish the police officers a speedy recovery, and wish, too, for speedy arrests, trials and convictions. That process would be greatly aided if, alongside words of condemnation, senior republicans, out of a sense of civic duty, passed on everything they knew about such people to the PSNI.
	We must also tackle the continuing problem of loyalist paramilitary organisations. Yes, the recent announcement was a step that takes things a bit further along. However, more remains to be done to deal with weapons and to call time on all forms of criminal activity. We are debating policing this evening, and everything that ties up necessary police resources contributes to making society less safe and people less secure. That goes for loyalist as well as republican communities.
	The current position of mainstream republicans also requires attention. The recent murder of Paul Quinn brought that to the fore once again. If it emerges that the IRA sanctioned that cowardly murder, will the Government take the view, as they did in the past, that democrats should be punished with the guilty, and say that we must continue to sit alongside them in an Executive? Would the Government then seriously propose devolving policing powers in such a setting? Have the Government genuinely learned so little? Is that what they expector perhaps what they expect of Northern Ireland politicians? Is that what they would call on the people of Northern Ireland to accept? If the Government are serious about devolution in Northern Ireland and about ever devolving policing and justice powers to Northern Ireland, they will display that seriousness now, or else they will show that they have not learned the lessons of recent years.
	We must also consider how we can best assist the police in performing their duties. Northern Ireland needs a police college, and work needs to commence urgently. The Northern Ireland Office has been stalling over police community support officers. When will proper funding be forthcoming? That needs to be tackled, and I urge the Minister to inform us exactly when the necessary steps will be taken and confirm that recruitment of police community support officers will definitely commence in April 2008.
	We must also consider the way in which we deal with past crimes. There is a continuing denial by many of their past. That is especially true of the republican movement. There is huge denial by republicans about what they call collusion. On 30 July, Gerry Adams said:
	Collusion and the use of counter-gangs were an integral part of British policy.
	Speaking at the so-called march for truth in Belfast, he stated:
	We are determined to campaign even though it may take a long time, until the British state acknowledges its administrative and institutional use of state violence and collusion...everyone knows that these tactics were employed by the British...but the British government has never acknowledged it... The extent of this cover-up is breathtaking.
	He continued:
	Yes the British recruited, blackmailed, tricked, intimidated and bribed individual republicans into working for them and I think it would be only right to have this dimension of British strategy investigated also. If the British state used former republicans to do its killing for it then the victims of that policy have the right to truth also.
	Mr. Adams is in the state of denial that has come to characterise Irish republicanism.
	I now come to a more personal part of my speech, which is about a relative. On 1 May 1979, ex-Reserve Constable Frederickor, as he was affectionately known, EricLutton was murdered by the IRA outside a National Trust attraction in the village of Moy, in County Armagh. A police radio alert called officers who were on patrol in the area. It told them that a shooting had occurred and that a Renault car had been used as the getaway vehicle. Those officers arrived at the scene as Mr. Lutton was being placed inside the ambulance. They set up a vehicle checkpoint five miles from the incident, at which they stopped a cattle lorry coming from the direction of the shooting.
	Inside that lorry were two brothers, well known smugglers with deep republican connections. The names of those two brothers have been forwarded to the historical inquiries team. As the police questioned the driver, one of the officers looked in the back of the truck. Inside was a Renault car matching the description of the getaway vehicle. The brothers were questioned about that and offered no credible explanation. Both were arrested under section 14 of the prevention of terrorism Act, on suspicion of being involved in terrorist activity. The two brothers were separated. One took the truck with a police escort to Gough barracks in Armagh, which we all know, and the other was taken in a police vehicle.
	That happened within 30 minutes of the shooting and less than five miles from where it took place. Yet today no record is to be found with the police of those two brothers or their arrest. Did they enjoy protection or immunity from prosecution? It has long been asserted by police officers that that was the case, and that another well-placed officer who was a relative of the two helped, as it were, to get it fixed for them. Tonight we have to ask: was that the case?
	As the ambulance carrying Mr. Lutton approached the hospital, a local cleric stopped his car in the middle of the road, blocking its path. He was made to move his car and Mr. Lutton was admitted to hospital, where he died. Why were no charges ever brought against that individual? We do not know whether Eric would have survivedprobably notbut impeding the medical assistance of a gravely wounded police officer not only was immoral, but helped to ensure that he would never provide any testimony about who was responsible.
	While at the family home, investigating officers discussed the case in front of Mr. Lutton's wife and family. They identified one Mr. Francie Molloy as a live suspect in the killing. They discussed the need to pursue a thorough investigation of Mr. Molloy. To a man, the investigating officers agreed that that was a vital line of inquiry. All that was discussed openly, in front of Mr. Lutton's wife and family. Molloy was well known to the police, yet none of this was ever fully investigated. Why was he not properly investigated?
	As well as being a suspect in the Lutton case and known to the police, Francie Molloy was well knownthis information comes from the policefor a series of sexual indiscretions. That was to rebound on Francie Molloy. He was caught by the security forces in a compromising position. As a result, he was recruited as an informer for the police. He would make regular contact with a handler at a public phone box near a road haulage company in town called Tamnamore, in County Tyrone. During the years that followed, Molloy passed on information to the police in Northern Ireland. That helped them to break open the IRA's notorious east Tyrone brigade. Prior to Molloy's recruitment, the east Tyrone brigade had been virtually impregnable. After it, the brigade suffered setbacks, taking direct hits and losing personnel.
	Any right-thinking person would wish to welcome the fact that the police in Northern Ireland were able to run agents against the IRA and to compromise it. But during that time, even though Molloy was an informer, it is also true that innocent people were attacked, injured and murdered, and he said or did nothing to prevent that. He was less than a willing informer. While he gave over enough information to help to compromise the IRA in east Tyrone, the question still lingers as to whether he gave everything he knew. How many of Molloy's neighbours lived under threat? How many were forced out of their homes, attacked, injured, killed or bereaved while he did nothing? Any good that he might have done by acting as an informer against the IRA, and by helping to compromise the east Tyrone brigade, was more than cancelled out by his callous disregard for the lives of his neighbours.
	Today, Francie Molloy is Deputy Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly. He is also the Sinn Fein spokesman on victims. If ever anyone was wholly unsuitable for such a position, it is Francie Molloy. Gerry Adams has said that the truth behind republican informersor touts, as they are called in Northern Irelandought to be told. However, he has described all such people as former republicans. How can this particular tout be a former republican when he remains a Sinn Fein MLA and his party's spokesman? How can he be a former republican when he is Sinn Fein's nominee for the position of Deputy Speaker in the Assembly? The denial that runs right to the very top of Sinn Fein is still very evident.
	I have been criticised by some for doing what I am doing here tonight. I want to make it perfectly clear that I am taking this step in order to ensure that a story that needs to be told will be told. The police in Northern Ireland infiltrated the republican movement, and they were helped by agents such as Francie Molloy and others yet to be exposed, whose activities weakened it from within. That the security forces would run agents was only to be expected, and that those agents would be people like Molloy who were usable in that way was predictable. However, the fact that someone such as Molloy chose to allow innocent people to die is reprehensible, and that is why he deserves to be exposed here tonight. I make no apology for doing that.
	There is a clear need to deal with the past in Northern Ireland, and in particular, with the policing of the past. Iand many, if not all, Members of the Househave the highest regard for the brave officers who protected the people from those who were intent on their murder. Today, however, there are many unsolved cases, grieving homes and vacant chairs. Many people do not even know the story of how their loved ones were cut down. We must give that to them.
	When I compare the money thrown at inquiries with the relatively small amount of funding that has been granted to the historical inquiries team, I have to ask whether the money could not have been better spent. We now also have Eames-Bradley consultative group. That group must not be used as a replacement for our competitor against the historical inquiries team. It is also important that there be no simple, one-size-fits-all attempt at a solution. Rather, there must be an approach that allows for individual grief to find expressionand, we hope, eventually some comfort.
	The past in Northern Ireland still cries out for its pain. The Bible contains this lament in verse 11 of chapter 8 of the book of Jeremiah:
	they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying Peace, peace; when there is no peace.
	In attempting to bring some kind of healing to the many in Northern Ireland who still carry the painful legacy of our past, we need to ensure that that we do not inflict the same upon them.

Paul Goggins: I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) on raising the issue of Northern Ireland policing in tonight's Adjournment debate. I know that he follows this issue very closely, not least because he is a member of the Policing Board. I hope that he will understand why it is not possible for me to comment on the detailed allegations and statements that he made, particularly in the latter part of his speech, in respect of the murder of Frederick Luttonor Eric to the hon. Gentleman, as he was a close relative. I will say, however, that Mr. Lutton, as a reservist RUC officer, was playing an important role in trying to keep the peace and maintain law and order at that time. He was one of the 3,368 innocent people whoneedlessly and often in a very violent waylost their lives during the troubles.
	I can tell the hon. Gentleman that all those deaths have been referred to the historical inquiries team and they will be looked into. There is an initial period in which the death is reviewed and information is sought; a decision is then made about whether to proceed with a full investigation or move to what is called the resolution of the particular case. That entails sharing as much information as possible with the family so that, as far as possible, the situation is explained and the family can somehow come to terms with its tragic loss. Let me assure the hon. Gentleman that there will be no interference in that process by any external force. It is a policing matter and a matter for the historical inquiries team, which conducts its inquiries as it sees fit. It is perfectly independent and free so to do.
	When we talk about policing in modern times in Northern Ireland as being a very positive influence on society, we in no way seek to detract from or criticise those who policed Northern Ireland in the past. It is very important to say that. Officers often had to deal with very difficult, almost impossibly challenging circumstances; we owe them a debt and pay due respect to them. It was important, however, for policing to move on as well.
	At the international policing conference held in Belfast in February, senior police officers from around the world attended to hear about developments in Northern Ireland and it became clear that Northern Ireland policing now sets a standard for policing around the world that others seek to follow. I certainly pay tribute to the Chief Constable, Sir Hugh Orde, and his senior team, who have provided great leadership to the Policing Board under the chairmanship of Sir Desmond Rea. As I have already mentioned, the hon. Gentleman is a member of the Policing Board, which has helped to guide and shape policing in Northern Ireland and to hold policing to account.
	There is also the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, a position held until recently by Nuala O'Loan. She often showed great courage and held the position with distinction. She is now succeeded by Al Hutchinson, who I am sure will continue to carry out the responsibilities in a similarly effective way. District policing partnerships are also important. Those two rolesthe ombudsman and the district policing partnershipsprovide additional scrutiny to policing in Northern Ireland, which is very welcome.
	The change has been accompanied by a growing confidence in policing. According to figures confirmed just this week, there is now 78 per cent. confidence in policing in Northern Ireland, which is tremendously encouraging when we look across the community there and think of where we have come from. There are a number of reasons for that. First and foremost, the Police Service of Northern Ireland is helping to bring crime down. I am able to say that 2,000 fewer crimes were committed last year than in the previous year and since 2002-03 there has been a 15 per cent. fall in crime. I am also pleased that the Policing Board has in setting priorities for reducing burglary and vehicle crime seen its ambitions fulfilledthere have been large reductions in those areas.
	The PSNI has become more representative of the communities it serves. That more needed to be done to encourage people from the Catholic community to enter the police service was a key Patten recommendation. He reported at the time that only 8 per cent. of the PSNI was Catholic. There is now 23 per cent. Catholic representation and that is on the way to being 30 per cent. by 2010-11. A police service more representative of the community it serves will generate greater confidence.
	There is also the historic decision taken by Sinn Fein earlier this year to support policing and the rule of law, enabling it to encourage people from the communities it represents to report crime, but also crucially to take their place on the Policing Board and district policing partnerships. Their support for policing has been fundamental and has underpinned the devolution settlement in Northern Ireland.
	A fourth reason for growing confidence in policing is the model, or style, of policing in Northern Ireland. In the past there has had to be a more remote, security-style of policing, but now we are able to move to neighbourhood policingto community policing and policing with the communitywhich will always engender a greater degree of confidence.
	Effective policing in Northern Ireland requires adequate resources and I am confident that, following the comprehensive spending review settlement, we will be able to provide the necessary financial support to make sure that Northern Ireland continues to be properly policed. At present, there are 7,500 regular police officers in Northern Ireland, and we understand why that figure is rather higher proportionally than in England and Wales. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made it clear in last week's Northern Ireland questions that that level of investment in policing must continue to be justified, but we still face considerable risks and threats. As the Gentleman alluded to, the attacks in recent days on officers Doherty and Musgrave confirm the threat that still remains from dissident republicans. It is encouraging that all political leaders in Northern Ireland immediately, clearly and unequivocally condemned the attacks on those two officers.
	What is now needed is for people deep within the communities to step forward, to stand shoulder to shoulder with their police officers and to make sure that those responsible are brought to justice. It is important that statements are made, evidence is given and the right thing is done so that the people responsible are put behind bars where they belong. I am pleased to report that when I visited the police at Dungannon last Tuesday afternoon in the wake of the shooting of the second officer, I found officers who were upbeat and confident and who remained absolutely determined to serve their community and to make sure that the right thing is done and that justice prevails.
	I, of course, join the hon. Gentleman in condemning absolutely the brutal murder of Paul Quinn some weeks ago. That matter is subject to police investigation, which will continue to be led by the Garda Siochana because the murder took place in the Republic. It will report in due course, as will the Independent Monitoring Commission. I know that the hon. Gentleman will pay particular attention to comments from both those sources.
	As the hon. Gentleman said, May 2007 was a significant time in Northern Ireland, and I was pleased to hear him extol the benefits of devolution. He is entirely right that having both this degree of scrutiny and political leadership in action at the local levelled, of course, by his colleague the right hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley), who is sitting with him this eveningis a huge step forward in terms of democracy and governance in Northern Ireland. It is good that local Ministers are now running the schools, the hospitals and all the important public services.
	I understand why it was not possible in the first stage of devolution to devolve policing and criminal justice powers, but people did vote for the whole devolution package, and in time they will want to see the whole of it delivered; they will want devolution to be completed.
	The hon. Gentleman will know the legislative procedure that we now adopt. The Assembly will make a report to the Secretary of State about the degree of readiness for the devolution of policing and justice powers in March next year. The key moment will come when the parties, together, want that devolution and the Assembly formally requests it. In the meantime, I assure him, his colleagues and all politicians in Northern Ireland that the Secretary of State and I will continue to work in partnership with the devolved Ministers to ensure that the people of Northern Ireland are properly protected.
	The hon. Gentleman mentioned several other issues, including parading. It is important that the peaceful parading of the past two years continues. That is why we established a review under the chairmanship of Lord Ashdown to see whether a consensus could be formed about how to ensure that parading continues in Northern Ireland in a sustainable and peaceful way, without the disruption and destruction that often occurred in the past.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about progress on the police college. I assure him that we are determined to see the police college delivered. More than that, we want an integrated college that will also train firefighters and prison officers. A project board is in place, and we are determined to ensure that that project is delivered. He also asked about police community support officers. As he knows, we have taken powers in this House to ensure that PCSOs can operate in Northern Ireland. I know from recent discussions that the Policing Board and the Chief Constable remain committed to that. An implementation date for the arrival of the first PCSOs has yet to be finally determined by the Chief Constable, but I am sure that he will take that decision in due course.
	The hon. Gentleman mentioned the commission on the past, which is being led by Lord Eames and Denis Bradley. It is important that they do their work, consulting people and communities across Northern Ireland to see whether it is possible to obtain a consensus about the way forwardthey are not trying to bury the past or ignore it. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the resources that go into policing and inquiring into the past. It increasingly comes into focus that every pound spent on policing the past is one that we cannot spend on policing the present. I am sure that Lord Eames and Denis Bradley will report on that issue, among others.
	Policing in Northern Ireland has come a long way, but it still has further to go. Al Hutchinson's final report as oversight commissioner described progress to date as the
	beginning footsteps in a long journey.
	We know that everybody in politics in Northern Ireland is now committed to that journey. I am sure that in due course it will lead to a permanent, peaceful and prosperous Northern Ireland where children can grow up with a bright future ahead of them.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at three minutes to Eight o'clock.